Evolution of the fractal surface of amorphous lead zirconate-titanate ...

PHYSICS OF THE SOLID STATE

VOLUME 41, NUMBER 2

FEBRUARY 1999

Evolution of the fractal surface of amorphous lead zirconate-titanate films during crystallization V. Ya. Shur,*) S. A. Negashev, A. L. Subbotin, D. V. Pelegov, E. A. Borisova, and E. B. Blankova Institute of Physics and Applied Mathematics, Ural State University, 620083 Ekaterinburg, Russia

S. Trolier-McKinstry Intercollege Material Research Laboratory, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA 16802, USA

~Submitted June 22, 1998! Fiz. Tverd. Tela ~St. Petersburg! 41, 306–309 ~February 1999!

The recrystallization kinetics of amorphous lead zirconate-titanate films prepared by sol-gel technology are investigated experimentally using elastic scattering of light. Sequences of elastic dependences of the scattered light intensity are recorded directly during thermal annealing. The evolution of the morphology of the film surface during annealing is described in terms of the variation of their fractal dimensionalities D s . The experimental dependences D s (t) are compared with the results of a computer simulation of the phase transition kinetics in a thin plate ~film!. © 1999 American Institute of Physics. @S1063-7834~99!02302-3#

with zero lead excess.8,9 X-ray-amorphous PZT films of thickness 0.420.6 m m were prepared on Pt/Ti/SiO2 /Si substrates ~the epitaxial platinum layer having a thickness of approximately 0.2 m m! at pyrolysis temperatures of 230– 420 °C. The annealing kinetics depended strongly on the pyrolysis temperature and the specific characteristics of the technological regime; the plate was therefore separated into several sections, which were then annealed under different conditions. Both conventional annealing at a slow heating rate (dT/dt