Hard and soft lead zirconate titanate thin films deposited on flat and curved surfaces by pulsed laser deposition

Lead zirconate titanate thin films offer considerably larger piezoelectric coefficients than do ZnO, and so are attractive for microelectromechanical sensors and actuators. To date, much of the research in this field has concentrated on undoped PZT. In this work, PZT films grown from both hard and soft PZT targets have been deposited on flat surfaces and on fibers by pulsed laser deposition so that the effect of doping on the properties can be determined. Dielectric constant and loss values of 1500 and 0.01 for soft films and 1100 and 0.03 for hard films have been achieved on flat Pt coated Si substrates with no observable difference in coercive fields, Remnant polarizations are typically 30 mu C/cm(2) for both types of films. A fiber rotator has been designed and employed to deposit films on fibers 50 mu m and larger.