Bipolar and unipolar electrical fatigue in ferroelectric lead zirconate titanate thin films: An experimental comparison study

Abstract

By performing standard positive-up-negative-down, hysteresis-loop and dielectric measurements on the ferroelectric lead zirconate titanate thin-film capacitors subject to bipolar/unipolar electrical cycling, we show that unipolar fatigue is evident though still less severe than bipolar fatigue conducted at the same voltage. That has been attributed to a series of periodic events of polarization backswitching (driven by the residual depolarization field) and switching (driven by the residual applied field) during unipolar electrical cycling, and explained using the LPD-SICI model (LPD-SICI stands for local phase decomposition caused by switching-induced charge injection). The dielectric results have been used to estimate the effective thickness di of the fatigue-induced degraded (pyrochlorelike) interfacial layer after bipolar/unipolar fatigue, which has not been done so far to our best knowledge. The fact that di is still much less than the film thickness even after the most severe bipolar fatigue strongly suggests that polarization fatigue in ferroelectrics is an interface effect, not a bulk one. © 2010 American Institute of Physics.