Improved energy storage properties of PbZrO3 thin films by inserting 0.88BaTiO3–0.12Bi(Mg1/2,Ti1/2)O3 layer

Abstract Trilayered PbZrO3/0.88BaTiO3–0.12Bi(Mg1/2,Ti1/2)O3/PbZrO3 (PZ/BT-BMT/PZ) thin films have been fabricated on Pt (1 1 1)/Ti/SiO2/Si substrates by sol–gel method. Compared with the PZ thin films, the PZ/BT-BMT/PZ trilayered thin films exhibit greatly enhanced electric breakdown strength, polarization and energy storage density. The polarization and energy storage density of the PZ/BT-BMT/PZ trilayered thin films are 92.2 μC/cm2 and 19.88 J/cm3 at a maximum applied electric field of 750 kV/cm, respectively. Moreover, the PZ/BT-BMT/PZ trilayered thin films show much better fatigue resistance than the PZ thin films. After 1.45 × 108 switching the polarization only reduces 8.12% for trilayered thin films while it is 25% for the PZ thin films. In order to further improve the energy storage properties of the PZ/BT-BMT/PZ thin films, the annealing process has been optimized and the trilayered thin films were prepared by layer-by-layer annealing. The layer-by-layer annealed PZ/BT-BMT/PZ trilayered thin films exhibit better energy storage properties than the trilayered thin films annealed once, and a maximum energy storage density of 28.36 J/cm3 was obtained.