Influences of space charge and electrode on the electrical transport through (Ba,Sr)TiO3 thin film capacitors

The combined model of thermionic emission and carrier drift-diffusion is derived to simulate the electrical transport through BST thin film capacitors. In the model the field-dependent permittivity is obtained from the derivative of the polarization distinguished with the traditional characterization. The simulated currents show the hysteresis. The influences of space charges and electrode materials on the current density-applied voltage characteristics have been studied. The simulation results suggest that the current densities can be greatly influenced by the space charges at the cathode interface and the barrier height at the electrode/BST interface. It is expected that this work can provide some useful guidelines to the design and performance improvement of BST thin film capacitors and other BST thin film devices. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.