To investigate the possibility of their application to both high density dynamic and nonvolatile ferroelectric random access memories, heteroepitaxial BaxSr1-xTiO3 (BSTO) thin films with various Ba content from x=0 to 1. 0 were prepared on conductive SrRuO3 electrode films, and the crystallographic, dielectric and ferroelectric properties were investigated. The compositional phase boundary between paraelectric and ferroelectric phase at room temperature was located at about x = 0. 12 in the heteroepitaxial films, indicating a quite different composition to that of the bulk (x = 0. 70). At this composition of x = 0. 12, the dielectric constant attained the maximum value of 740 for the BSTO film with a thickness of 77 nm. The composition with a lager Ba content (x 0. 32) showed ferroelectricity at room temperature. The maximum value of remanent polarization of 2Pr = 0. 38 C/m2 was obtained at the composition of x = 0. 70 in this study.

Pb(ZrxTi1-x)O3 (PZT) thin films were prepared on various electrodes. When Ir system materials were used as electrodes, fatigue properties of PZT thin films were improved. Moreover, in the case of the PZT thin film on an Ir/IrO2 electrode, not only fatigue but imprint properties were clearly improved. We could find these improvements were caused by good barrier effect of IrO2 from secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS) analysis. By applying these Ir system electrodes, we fabricated stacked capacitors on polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) plugs. In spite of high temperature thermal processing, we found poly-Si plugs were ohmically connected with the bottom electrodes of the capacitors from hysteresis measurements and I-V characteristics, and could greatly expect them for practical use.

We have constructed Bi based layer structured ferroelectric films and their superlattices by a pulsed laser deposition technique. The dielectric constants along c-axis increase with increasing of the number of pseudo-perovskite layers between double Bi2O2 layers. Ferroelectricity appears along the c-axis direction only for the odd number of the perovskite layers owing to the mirror symmetry in a crystal structure. Especially, the Bi2VO5. 5 film shows an atomically flat surface, low dielectric constant of 30 and ferroelectricity of Pr=3 µC/cm2 and Ec=16 kV/cm, respectively. This material is expected to the application for FRAMs.