Highly preferred oriented lead barium titanate thin films using acetylacetone as chelating agent in a sol-gel process

Ferroelectric (Pb_1-x, Ba_x)TiO₃ (PB_xT) materials can be synthesized by a sol-gel process incorporating acetylacetone as a chelating agent to form ligand with titanium isopropoxide. It was found that a less cross-linking gel obtained at 120 °C and could be converted to nanometric-sized perovskite phase powder. A high purity of (Pb_0.5, Ba_0.5)TiO₃ powder was obtained at 500 °C, with a nano-meteric size of about 30-50 nm the specific surface area of 21.91 m²/g. Furthermore, highly oriented PB_xT thin films were obtained by utilizing the as-prepared sol spin-coating on (100) MgO substrate. The oriented films were synthesized from all compositions between x = 0.2 and x = 0.8, at a crystallization temperature of 600 °C. In particular, for the Ba content in the range of x = 0.5-0.6, highly preferred (001)/(100) planes were observed.