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Lead scandium titanate (PST) thin films were deposited by RF dual magnetron sputtering and then annealed either by vacuum furnace or combined rapid thermal annealing (RTA) and furnace anneal. The film structure was investigated by x-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy techniques. Lead loss was more severe using furnace annealing than the combined RTA and furnace anneal. The annealed films were characterized by the presence of voids and exhibited relaxor ferroelectric characteristics. PST perovskite crystal grains were found to co-exist with pyrochlore matrix in the furnace-only annealed films, whilst in RTA annealed films no apparent pyrochlore morphology was observed in the TEM image. Lead was found to diffuse through the bottom electrode Pt layer during the annealing. Films treated by combining RTA and furnace annealing have shown pyroelectric coefficients under field of up to 500 µC m-2 K-1, a dielectric loss of below 0.007 and a merit figure for thermal detection of 2.5×10-5 Pa-1/2.

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Comparing to conventional short-pulse (<30ns) excimer laser annealing, the extended pulse (374ns) can provide sufficient thermal energy and time into the Pb(Zr1−xTix)O3 (PZT) thin film to complete the crystallization, whereas the bulk of the material remains at low temperature. In this study, thermal simulation is presented to illustrate the temperature distribution in the specimen and the benefits of the extended pulse. With extended-pulse laser annealing, we observe a 50% improvement in remanent polarization because of the elimination of the amorphous layer on the PZT surface, which is also confirmed by cross-section transmission electron microscopy analysis. This low temperature process is suitable for embedded capacitor-over-interconnect ferroelectric random access memory for advanced system-on-chip applications.