Characterization of sol-gel-prepared magnesium-modified lead titanate thin films

Pb1-xMgxTiO3 (PMT) thin films (x=0–0.08) were deposited onto Pt/SiO2/Si substrates by diol-based sol-gel processing. The influence of various processing methods on the characteristics of the thin films was studied by varying the magnesium contents and heating temperatures (500–800 °C) of the samples. In the present study, the relative dielectric constant (er) of the PMT thin films increased from 25.8 to 91.8 as the magnesium content increased. The coercive field (Ec) and the remanent polarization (Pr) decreased as the magnesium content increased, but the dielectric loss factor (cosδ) and the pyroelectric coefficient (p) increased. The PMT thin films with x=0.06 exhibited the largest figures of merit for voltage responsivity and specific detectivity. These results indicate that the PMT thin film with x=0.06 was most suitable for application to high-performance pyroelectric thin-film detectors.