Thin Film Capacitors Cut from Single Crystals Using Focused Ion Beam Milling

Abstract

The Focused Ion Beam Microscope (FIB) has been used to fabricate capacitors from single crystals of BaTiO₃ and SrTiO₃ with electrode areas ∼200μm², and thickness of single crystal dielectric between 2μm and 500nm. Cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy revealed that during capacitor fabrication, the FIB rendered around 20nm of dielectric at the electrode-dielectric interface amorphous, associated with local gallium impregnation. Such a region would act electrically in series with the single crystal and would presumably have a considerable negative influence on dielectric properties. However, annealing prior to electrode deposition was found to fully recover the single crystal, and homogenise the gallium profile. Some subsequent dielectric testing of SrTiO₃ was performed yielding a room temperature dielectric constant of ∼150 and loss tangent of 0.015 at 100kHz. A technique has therefore been demonstrated which allows fabrication of capacitors in which size-effects in ‘thin-films’ can be studied, without the influence of grain boundaries, and other issues associated with conventional thin film growth.