Orientation Preferred Structures in BaTiO₃ Thin Films on Ni Substrates

We report the fabrication of the orientation preferred structures in BaTiO3 thin films on Ni substrates using pulsed laser deposition. Transmission electron microscopy studies showed that the films consist of crystalline structures of tetragonal BaTiO3. More than 60% of BaTiO3 grains in the films exhibit nearly the same crystallographic orientation with their a-axis lying in the film plane and the [011] direction parallel to the growth direction. Such orientation preferred structures were grown on a Ni nanocrystalline buffer layer. This result demonstrated the possibility of approximating an oriented single crystalline ceramic oxide structures on metallic substrates.