Abstract
The bismuth layered perovskite structured ferroelectrics (BLSF) are well known for their good ferroelectric characteristics. Recently, SrBi2Ta2O9 (SBT) and SrBi2Ta2-xNbxO9 (SBTN) have shown attractive properties for ferroelectric random access memories because of their high endurance characteristic. In addition to SBT and SBTN, their lies a possibility of many different BLSF materials waiting to be explored. One such material is lanthanum substituted bismuth titanate Bi4-xLaxTi3O12 (BLT) that has received some attention lately. The BLT thin films were prepared by conventional metal organic decomposition technique on the platinum electrode for evaluating ferroelectric characteristics of BLT and possibility of low temperature crystallization. It was found that BLT can be crystallized at 550C with random orientation and very good ferroelectric properties were observed: the remnant polarization (2Pr) was over 20μC/cm2 with low leakage current. Furthermore, the BLT capacitor did not show any significant fatigue up to 3.2×1010 cycles even at 85C.