A new technique has been developed for the characterization of dielectric voltage-and charge-decay times (Tv and TQ) in sol-gel derived ferroelectric films under open-circuit conditions. Voltage decay potentially poses a limitation on the maximum allowable refresh-time in the DRAM capacitor. This direct measurement of Tv is preferred to its conventional estimation based on the currentvoltage relationship, because of the implicit inclusion of nonlinearities and stress-induced leakage-reduction effects.Undoped and lanthanum-doped lead-zirconate-titanate ( E T ) films have also been characterized for frequency-dispersion in largesignal polarization, bit "0" relaxation and a new bit "1" relaxation mechanism using techniques developed recently. It is proposed that any evaluation of high-permittivity dielectrics for DRAM applications must include these measurements.