Fatigue in Ferroelectric Materials

The rate dependencies of the ferroelectric material properties are also reflected in the dynamics after fatigue. Initially, most of the domain system will be switched almost instantaneously [235], and only a small amount of polarization will creep for longer time periods [194]. A highly retarded stretched exponential relaxation was observed after bipolar fatigue treatment [235], and these observations correlated well with the thermally activated domain dynamics. If the overall materials response was represented in a rate-dependent constitutive material law 236], however, then a growing defect cluster size would retard the domain dynamics considerably. Hard and soft material behaviors were also representable as different barrier heights to a thermally activated domain wall motion, as demonstrated by the theoretical studies of Belov and Kreher [236]. 

Ferroelectric thin films considerably gain in interest within the last couple of years due to their potential application in nonvolatile random-accessmemory devices (FeRAM). Among potential candidates, PbZr. n i, (>> (pzt) is one of the most promising materials because of its large remanent polarization and low coercive field. However, pzt is also well known for its poor fatigue behavior on metal electrodes [1,2] and occurrence of size effects [3-5] which are well due to the ferroelectric/electrode interface properties [1-5]. 

Combining different ferroelectric layers to enhance comprehensive properties of ferroelectric thin films is also of interest. The aim is to utilize the advantages of the individual materials. Bao, et al. [6,42] prepared BLaT/PZT/BLaT tri-layered thin films by PLD. The sandwiched structure exhibited good ferroelectric properties with high fatigue resistance as shown in Figure 3 [6]. 

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