A method providing estimation of the trap density at metal/ferroelectric interfaces of a depleted ferroelectric film located between back-to-back Schottky barriers has been developed. The method is based on the recharge of interface traps induced by external bias pulse applied to the metal/ferroelectric/metal structure. It is shown that the transient current under bias pulse can be controlled by the traps recharge on the reverse-biased interface. Using the method, the trap charge density on interfaces of MOCVD Pt/PZT/Ir(Ti/SiO2/Si) and Ir/PZT/Ir(Ti/SiO2/Si) capacitors were found from transient current measurements.

Thin-film uniform metal-ferroelectric-metal (M/F/M) structure between back-to-back Schottky barriers (SBs) is considered. The ferroelectric is assumed to be a p-type semiconductor, and the film thickness is far less than the depletion layer induced by the S.B. Numerical integration of the Poisson equation is used to analyze the influence of double Shottky barriers on the distributions of the electric field, potential, and polarization across the film thickness as functions of external bias and the film electrical history. The range of structure parameters is determined, where the Poisson equation for M/F/M structure can be solved analytically providing an obvious and easy-to-interpret representation of the M/F/M behavior. Electric fields induced by back-to-back SBs under zero external bias compensate each other to a great extent. As a result, the potential across the ferroelectric film remains virtually unchanged providing the flat-band condition in the energy diagram of zero-biased M/F/M structure; in fact, the external bias applied to M/F/M structure exerts influence only on the reverse-biased barrier.

Retention loss is a significant issue for an application of ferroelectric thin films to high-density non-volatile memory devices. We investigated the polarization retention characteristics of ferroelectric Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 (PZT) thin films which were fabricated on Pt/IrO2/Ir substrates by different deposition methods. In thermally-accelerated retention failure tests, Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 (PZT) films which were prepared by a chmeical solution deposition (CSD) method showed rapid decay of retained polarization charges as the films became thinner down to 1000 Å, while the films which were grown by metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) showed relatively large nonvolatile charges at the same thickness. We concluded that in the CSD-grown films, the relatively large interfacial passive layer compared with the MOCVD-grown films had an unfavorable effect on retention behavior. We observed the existence of such interfacial layers by extrapolation of the total capacitance with thickness of the films and the capacitance of this layer was larger in MOCVD-grown films. It means that the possibility of the accumulation of space charges at the interface was reduced, so that less imprint and less retention loss could be observed in the MOCVD-grown films.