Leveraging past research activities in orientation control of lead zirconate titanate (PZT) thin films [1,2], this work attempts to optimize those research results using the fabrication equipment at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory so as to achieve a high degree of {001}- texture and improved piezoelectric properties. Initial experiments examined the influence of Ti/Pt and TiO2/Pt thins films used as the base-electrode for chemical solution deposition PZT thin film growth. In all cases, the starting silicon substrates used a 500 nm thermally grown silicon dioxide. The Pt films were sputter deposited onto highly textured titanium dioxide films grown by a thermal oxidation process of a sputtered Ti film [3]. The second objective targeted was to achieve highly {001}-textured PZT using a seed layer of PbTiO3 (PT). A comparative study was performed between Ti/Pt and TiO2/Pt bottom electrodes. The results indicate that the use of a highly oriented TiO2 led to highly {111}-textured Pt, which in turn improved both the PT and PZT orientations. Both PZT (52/48) and (45/55) thin films with and without PT seed layers were deposited and examined via x-ray diffraction methods (XRD) as a function of annealing temperature. As expected, the PT seed layer provides significant improvement in the PZT {001}-texture while suppressing the {111}-texture of the PZT. Improvements in the Lotgering factor (f) were observed upon comparison of the original Ti/Pt/PZT process (f=0.66) with samples using the PT seed layer as a template, Ti/Pt/PT/PZT (f=0.87), and with films deposited onto the improved Pt electrodes, TiO2/Pt/PT/PZT (f=0.96).