The effect of deposition temperature on the electrical and physical properties of the Ba(Zr, Ti)O 3 thin films Won Seok Choi * , Bum Sik Jang, Yonghan Roh, Junsin Yi, Byungyou Hong School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University, Suwon 440-746, South Korea Abstract We investigated the structural and electrical properties of the Ba(Zr x Ti 1x )O 3 (BZT) thin films with a mole fraction of x ¼ 0:2. BZT films were prepared on Pt/SiO 2 /Si substrate with rf magnetron sputter deposition. For a substrate temperature above 500 °C, multi-crystalline BZT films oriented to (1 1 0), (1 1 1), and (2 0 0) directions were formed. This paper reports results from the BZT film deposited at 400 °C with the following characteristics; the dielectric constant of 95, dissipation factor of 0.021 at 1 MHz, and the leakage current of 2:32  10 7 A=cm 2 at 1 MV/cm. We produced a polycrystalline BZT film with an excellent electrical stability at a substrate temperature as low as 400 °C. Ó 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PACS: 73.20; 73.61 1. Introduction There are many studies of (Ba 1x Sr x )TiO 3 (BST) for DRAM application [1,2]. The BST film has high dielectric constant, low leakage current, and low dielectric dispersion. However, BST thin films often have high current emission at low electric field [3], and it is necessary to increase the elec- trode area of the capacitor to obtain the required high capacitance. This forces a limit on film thick- ness and capacitor area. Therefore, new types of dielectric films with high dielectric constant and low and stable leakage current need to be devel- oped. There have been some efforts to replace the BST film with new films such as Ta 2 O 5 [4], (Ba 1x Sr x )- (Ti 1y Zr y )O 3 (BSTZ) [5], and BZT [6,7]. In case of BZT, it is obtained by substituting ions at the B site of the BaTiO 3 with Zr in compounds of the perovskite structure ABO 3 . It is reported that an increase in the Zr content induces a reduction in the average grain size, decreases the dielectric constant ðe r Þ, and maintains a leakage current low and stable [6,8]. This is possible because the Zr 4þ ion has lager ionic size (0.087 nm) than Ti 4þ (0.068 nm). The researches for MLCC have been performed in a way that the internal electrodes using noble metal like Pd should be replaced by ones using Ni or Ni-compound in order to make cost [9]. How- ever, recently, interest in using thin film processes has increased [10]. There are several advantages of using thin film process, such as the ability to Journal of Non-Crystalline Solids 303 (2002) 190–193 www.elsevier.com/locate/jnoncrysol * Corresponding author. Tel.: +82-31 290 7209; fax: +82-31 290 7191. E-mail address: feelws@mail.skku.ac.kr (W.S. Choi). 0022-3093/02/$ - see front matter Ó 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. PII:S0022-3093(02)00984-5