Piezoelectric analysis of reactively grown PbTiO₃

We have investigated a technique that is a combination of sputtering, evaporation, and annealing for the production of thin film and nanostructured PbTiO₃ that we show to be piezoelectric via piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM). The synthesis technique involved depositing lead, via thermal evaporation, onto the surface of a variety of substrates that had Ti as the uppermost layer, followed by conventional or rapid thermal annealing in air to form PbTiO₃. By careful control of the deposition time, samples ranging from discrete nanoislands to thin films could be produced. The nanoisland samples while exhibiting a piezoelectric response displayed little or no domain structure even with grains as large as 100 nm in diameter. However, we see a domain pattern in the thin film samples. We show that there are difficulties in poling PbTiO₃ thin films using PFM due to the high coercive field required and the number of shorts through the thin films.