Epitaxial Growth and Anisotropic Dielectric Properties of La-Doped Bi₄Ti₃O₁₂ Thin Films

To investigate the anisotropic dielectric properties of layer-structured bismuth-based ferroelectrics along different crystal directions, we fabricate devices along different crystal orientations using highly c-axis oriented Bi3.25La0.75Ti3O12 (BLT) thin films on (001) LaAlO3 (LAO) substrates. Experimental results have shown that the dielectric properties of the BLT films are highly anisotropic along different crystal directions. The dielectric constants (1MHz at 300 K) are 358 and 160 along [100] and [110], respectively. Dielectric nonlinearity is also detected along these crystal directions. On the other hand, a much smaller dielectric constant and no detectable dielectric nonlinearity in a field range of 0-200 kV/cm are observed for films along [001] when c-axis oriented SRO is used as the bottom electrode.