We study the dielectric response of ferroelectric (FE) thin films with "dead" dielectric layer at the interface with electrodes. The domain structure inevitably forms in the FE film in presence of the dead layer. As a result, the effective dielectric constant of the capacitor ǫ ef f increases abruptly when the dead layer is thin and, consequently, the pattern of 180-degree domains becomes "soft". We compare the exact results for this problem with the description in terms of a popular "capacitor" model, which is shown to give qualitatively incorrect results. We relate the present results to fatigue observed in thin ferroelectric films. 77.22.Ch, 77.80.Dj, 84.32.Tt, 85.50.+k We have shown recently that the dead layer forming at the interface between ferroelectric (FE) thin film and electrodes has drastic effect on the electric response of a capacitor [1]. It has direct bearing on fatigue observed in FE capacitors since in many cases the deterioration of the switching behavior, like the loss of the coercive force and of the squareness of hysteresis loop, were attributed to the growth of a "passive layer" at the ferroelectricelectrode interface [2][3][4][5]. It is of principal importance that the presence of a dead layer, no matter how thin in comparison with thickness of the ferroelectric layer, triggers a formation of the domain structure in FE film [1]. We have shown that when the thickness of the dead layer d is not very small, the apparent (net) polarization P a of the ferroelectric with 180−degree domain walls follows an approximate relation dP a /dE ∝ ǫ g /d, which is in good correspondence with available experimental data (see e.g. [6,7] and references therein). Importantly, the response of this structure to an external bias voltage becomes more rigid when d increases, i.e. when the dead layer grows, even in the absence of pinning by defects.The implication for real systems is that with the growth of the passive layer the hysteresis loop very quickly deteriorates and looses its squareness, as observed. The approximate 1/d dependence of the response suggests that the effective dielectric constant of the capacitormay become very large when the layer is thin. Here C is the capacitance of the electroded FE film of area A, with L the separation between electrodes. Indeed, when the dead layer is thin, the domain width a becomes very large, it grows exponentially with 1/d 2 [1]. The response of this domain structure is very soft, and this should translate into very abrupt increase of the dielectric constant ǫ ef f of the capacitor. It is easy to show that in the present case (180 o domains) the linear response is not changed by electromechanical effect, the change in ǫ ef f only appearing in quadratic terms in external field, but here we are interested in zero-field value of ǫ ef f only. We have assumed a quadratic coupling between the elastic strains and the polarization (as in perovskites). In this case the linear response of 180 0 domain structure without pinning is not affected by intimate contact between th...