Morphological and electrical investigations of lead zirconium titanate thin films obtained by sol-gel synthesis on indium tin oxide electrodes

In recent years, interest in PbZr0.53Ti0.47O3 PZT films has been rapidly increasing due to theirtechnological applications as ferroelectric materials. In the present work, PZT films are obtained bysol-gel synthesis and deposited by spin coating on a transparent conductor substrate, with aperspective application as rectifying layers in asymmetric nematic liquid crystal cells. An extensiveinvestigation is carried out on the effects of different annealing temperatures, with regard to the filmtexture and to the electric polarization properties, by using low vacuum scanning electronmicroscopy, atomic force microscopy, and electrostatic force microscopy. It has been observed thatPZT domains self-organize into flower-like dendritic structures with a “rosetta” shape at the earlystage of crystallization, occurring for annealing temperatures higher than 600 °C; the dimensions ofsuch structures increase versus the annealing temperature. The ferroelectric properties of the PZTfilms have been related to the observed domains.