Epitaxial thin film heterostructures of relaxor ferroelectric Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-PbTiO3

Abstract We have grown stoichiometric pure perovskite phase Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-PbTiO3 (PMN-PT) thin films and PMN-PT/SrRuO3 heterostructures on miscut (100) SrTiO3 substrates by pulsed laser deposition. X-ray diffraction θ–2θ scans show that the PMN-PT films are purely c-axis oriented. The off-axis Φ scans show that the heterostructures grow “cube-on-cube” with an in-plane epitaxial arrangement of PMN-PT[100], [010] // SrRuO3[001] // SrTiO3[100] and PMN-PT[010], [100] // SrRuO3[110] // SrTiO3[010]. The crystalline quality of the films found to be comparable to that of bulk single crystals. The AFM images show that the SrRuO3 and PMN-PT layers have smooth surfaces with root mean square roughness of 9Å. These epitaxial heterostructures can be used for the fabrication of piezoelectric devices.