X-ray combined analysis of fiber-textured and epitaxial Ba(Sr,Ti)O3 thin films deposited by radio frequency sputtering

A complete study is given in this paper on the structural properties of Ba(Sr,Ti)O3 (BST) thin films which present various preferred orientations: (111) and (001) fiber and epitaxial textures. The films are deposited in situ at 800 deg. C by sputtering on Si/SiO2/TiOx/Pt substrates and the orientation is controlled by monitoring the concentration of O2 in the reactive plasma or by prior deposition of a very thin TiOx buffer layer between BST films and substrates. The epitaxial films are obtained on (001)-alpha-Al2O3 substrates covered with TiOx buffer layers. In order to analyze finely the preferred orientations, the texture, the microstructural features, and the anisotropy-related quantities such as residual stresses in the films, the conventional Bragg-Brentano θ - 2θ x-ray diffraction diagrams is shown not to be sufficient. So, we systematically used x-ray combined analysis, a recently developed methodology which gives access to precise determination of the structure (cell parameters and space group) of the films, their orientation distributions (texture strengths and types) and mean crystallite sizes, their residual stresses. This fine structural analysis shows important modifications between the film qualities which induce differences in BST films electrical behavior, permittivity, loss tangent, and tunability.