Abstract
We investigated the polarization retention characteristics of ferroelectric capacitors with $Pb(Zr,Ti)O_3$ (PZT) thin films which were fabricated by different deposition methods. In thermally-accelerated retention tests, PZT films which were prepared by a chemical solution deposition (CSD) method showed rapid decay of retained polarization charges as the thickness of the films decreased down to 100 nm, while the films which were grown by metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) retained relatively large non-volatile charges at the corresponding thickness. We concluded that in the CSD-grown films, the thicker interfacial passive layer compared with the MOCVD-grown films had an unfavorable effect on retention behavior. We observed the existence of such interfacial layers by extrapolation of the total capacitance with thickness of the films and the capacitance of these layers was larger in MOCVD-grown films than in CSD-grown films. Due to incomplete compensation of surface polarization charges by the free charges in the metal electrodes, the interfacial field activated the space charges inside the interfacial layers and deposited them at the boundary between the ferroelectric layer and the interfacial layer. Such space charges built up an internal field inside the films, which interfered with domain wall motion, so that retention property at last became degraded. We observed less imprint which was a result of less internal field in MOCVD-grown films while large imprint was observed in CSD-grown films.