Piezoelectric analysis of reactively grown PbTiO3

We have investigated a technique that is a combination of sputtering, evaporation, and annealing for the production of thin film and nanostructured PbTiO3 that we show to be piezoelectric via piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM). The synthesis technique involved depositing lead, via thermal evaporation, onto the surface of a variety of substrates that had Ti as the uppermost layer, followed by conventional or rapid thermal annealing in air to form PbTiO3. By careful control of the deposition time, samples ranging from discrete nanoislands to thin films could be produced. The nanoisland samples while exhibiting a piezoelectric response displayed little or no domain structure even with grains as large as 100 nm in diameter. However, we see a domain pattern in the thin film samples. We show that there are difficulties in poling PbTiO3 thin films using PFM due to the high coercive field required and the number of shorts through the thin films.