Epitaxial Stress-Free Growth of High Crystallinity Ferroelectric PbZr0.52Ti0.48O3 on GaN/AlGaN/Si(111) Substrate

Abstract

Due to its physical properties gallium-nitride (GaN) is gaining a lot of attention as an emerging semiconductor material in the field of high-power and high-frequency electronics applications. Therefore, the improvement in the performance and/or perhaps even extension in functionality of GaN based devices would be highly desirable. The integration of ferroelectric materials such as lead–zirconate–titanate (PbZrxTi1-xO3) with GaN has a strong potential to offer such an improvement. However, the large lattice mismatch between PZT and GaN makes the epitaxial growth of Pb(Zr1-xTix)O3 on GaN a formidable challenge. This work discusses a novel strain relaxation mechanism observed when MgO is used as a buffer layer, with thicknesses down to a single unit cell, inducing epitaxial growth of high crystallinity Pb(Zr0.52Ti0.48)O3 (PZT) thin films. The epitaxial PZT films exhibit good ferroelectric properties, showing great promise for future GaN device applications.