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Dielectric Relaxation of La-Doped Zirconia Caused by Annealing Ambient
C Z Zhao1,2, M Werner3,4, S Taylor3
1Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong, Liverpool University, 215123, Suzhou, Jiangsu, China. cezhou.zhao@xjtlu.edu.cn.
Abstract:
La-doped zirconia films, deposited by ALD at 300°C, were found to be amorphous with dielectric constants (k-values) up to 19. A tetragonal or cubic phase was induced by post-deposition annealing (PDA) at 900°C in both nitrogen and air. Higher k-values (~32) were measured following PDA in air, but not after PDA in nitrogen. However, a significant dielectric relaxation was observed in the air-annealed film, and this is attributed to the formation of nano-crystallites. The relaxation behavior was modeled using the Curie-von Schweidler (CS) and Havriliak-Negami (HN) relationships. The k-value of the as-deposited films clearly shows a mixed CS and HN dependence on frequency. The CS dependence vanished after annealing in air, while the HN dependence disappeared after annealing in nitrogen.
