Synthesis, deposition and characterization of ferroelectric films for electrooptic devices

The use of integrable ferroelectric electro-optic thin films is a revolutionary approach in the development of high-speed, low-voltage and high-contrast ratio integrated electro-optic spatial light modulators (SLM) for free-space optoelectronic interconnects. Thin films offer improved performance over bulk ferroelectric (FE) materials because of their lower modulator capacitance and operation at high speeds with low switching energies. Integration of ferroelectric thin films with silicon technology will also impact both the uncooled infrared sensor and dynamic and nonvolatile memory technologies. Ferroelectrics such as lead lanthanum zirconate titanate (PLZT) and patassium tantalate niobate (KTN) present great potential for SLMs due to their large electro-optic (EO) effect in the bulk form. The development of thin-film SLMs require electro-optic films of high optical quality with good dielectric and EO properties.; High quality thin films of PLZT and KTN were deposited using RF magnetron sputtering on r-plane sapphire substrates which offer integration capability with semiconductor devices. PLZT films with extremely large peak dielectric constant, 2800 at the Curie temperature of 180{dollar}spcirc{dollar}C, were achieved with remarkably low dissipation loss factor {dollar}<{dollar}0.04. The dielectric frequency dispersion was determined to be very small up to 1 Mhz. Also, the absorption of the light in the films was very low. A giant effective quadratic electrooptic effect was demonstrated in PLZT films. These results represent a huge leap forward for the FE-SLM technology with respect to the goal of fully integrated thin film electrooptic light modulators.; Microstructural development and phase transformation kinetics in PLZT films were also analyzed for the first time and are presented here. Energy required for the formation of desirable perovskite phase was determined to be 322 kJ/mol. Single-phase PLZT films with larger average grain size showed higher dielectric constants and better EO properties as compared to films with smaller grain size. Furthermore, a method of sol-gel synthesis of KTN with reproducible characteristics was developed for fabrication of both thin films and homogeneous sputtering targets. Also for the first time, a stoichiometric KTN target was consolidated to high density by hot-isostatic pressing developed during this study.