Synthesis of (Ba,Sr)TiO3 thin films by plasma-activated pulsed laser deposition technique

We report the synthesis of(Ba,Sr)TiO3 (BST) thin films using plasma-activated pulsed laser deposition (PA-PLD) in oxygen ambient. In the PA-PLD system, an RF inductive coil was placed between a target and a substrate, to which RF power of about 50W was supplied. A SiO2 tube was positioned in the coil to confine the plasma particles. The BST films were deposited on SrTiO3 (100) substrates at various temperatures by PA-PLD and the conventional PLD method. X-ray diffraction results show that the films deposited by both methods were highly oriented in the (100) direction: and the crystallinity of conventional PLD films was slightly better than that of PA-PLD films. However. atomic force microcopy observation showed the surface morphology of the PA-PLD films was smoother than that of conventional PLD films. The leakage cut-rent characteristics of PA-PLD films were also effectively improved compared to those of conventional PLD.