ABSTRACT
Ferroelectric thin film materials have had a strong resurgence in research and development recently, primarily because of their potential use as non-volatile, random access memories integrated with existing Si CMOS transistor circuitry. 1 - 4 Conventionally the ferroelectric thin films, such as lead zirconate titanate (PZT), are deposited onto Pt coated Si wafers with Pt top contact electrodes to form the capacitor structure. Thin film deposition techniques including sol-gel spin-on, sput tering, chemical vapor deposition, and pulsed laser deposition are being used to deposit the thin films. Solutions to reliability issues such as fatigue, aging, retention and imprinting are being explored concurrently with issues related to integration with CMOS drive circuitry5 - 10 and scaling down to dimensions that are commen surate with the requirements of high density nonvolatile memory technology.
