The past five years have witnessed some dramatic developments in the general area of ferroelectric thin films materials and devices. Ferroelectrics are not new materials by any stretch ofimagination. Indeed, they have been known since the early partofthis century and popular ferroelectric materials such as Barium Titanate have been in use since the second world war. In the late sixties and seventies, a considerable amountofresearch and development effort was made to create a solid state nonvolatile memory using ferroelectrics in a vary simple matrix-addressed scheme. These attempts failed primarily due to problems associated with either the materials ordue to device architectures. The early eighties saw the advent of new materials processing approaches, such as sol-gel processing, that enabled researchers to fabricate sub-micron thin films of ferroelectric materials on a silicon substrate. These pioneering developments signaled the onsetofa revival in the areaofferroelectric thin films, especially ferroelectric nonvolatile memories. Research and development effort in ferroelectric materials and devices has now hit a feverish pitch, Many university laboratories, national laboratories and advanced R&D laboratories oflarge IC manufacturers are deeply involved in the pursuit of ferroelectric device technologies. Many companies worldwide are investing considerable manpower and resources into ferroelectric technologies. Some have already announced products ranging from embedded memories in micro controllers, low density stand-alone memories, microwave circuit elements, andrf identification tags. There is now considerable optimism that ferroelectric devices andproducts will occupy a significant market-share in the new millennium.

This book presents a comprehensive review of the most important methods used in the characterisation of piezoelectric, ferroelectric and pyroelectric materials. It covers techniques for the analysis of bulk materials and thick and thin film materials and devices. There is a growing demand by industry to adapt and integrate piezoelectric materials into ever smaller devices and structures. Such applications development requires the joint development of reliable, robust, accurate and – most importantly – relevant and applicable measurement and characterisation methods and models. In the past few years there has been a rapid development of new techniques to model and measure the variety of properties that are deemed important for applications development engineers and scientists. The book has been written by the leaders in the field and many chapters represent established measurement best practice, with a strong emphasis on application of the methods via worked examples and detailed experimental procedural descriptions. Each chapter contains numerous diagrams, images, and measurement data, all of which are fully referenced and indexed. The book is intended to occupy space in the research or technical lab, and will be a valuable and practical resource for students, materials scientists, engineers, and lab technicians.

The impetus for the rapid development of thin film technology, relative to that of bulk materials, is its application to a variety of microelectronic products. Many of the characteristics of thin film ferroelectric materials are utilized in the development of these products - namely, their nonvolatile memory and piezoelectric, pyroelectric, and electro-optic properties. It is befitting, therefore, that the first of a set of three complementary books with the general title Integrated Ferroelectric Devices and Technologies focuses on the synthesis of thin film ferroelectric materials and their basic properties. Because it is a basic introduction to the chemistry, materials science, processing, and physics of the materials from which integrated ferroelectrics are made, newcomers to this field as well as veterans will find this book self-contained and invaluable in acquiring the diverse elements requisite to success in their work in this area. It is directed at electronic engineers and physicists as well as process and system engineers, ceramicists, and chemists involved in the research, design, development, manufacturing, and utilization of thin film ferroelectric materials.

Thin films have an extremely broad range of applications from electronics and optics to new materials and devices. Collaborative and multidisciplinary efforts from physicists, materials scientists, engineers and others have established and advanced a field with key pillars constituting (i) the synthesis and processing of thin films, (ii) the understanding of physical properties in relation to the nanometer scale, (iii) the design and fabrication of nano-devices or devices with thin film materials as building blocks, and (iv) the design and construction of novel tools for characterization of thin films.Against the backdrop of the increasingly interdisciplinary field, this book sets off to inform the basics of thin film physics and thin film devices. Readers are systematically introduced to the synthesis, processing and application of thin films; they will also study the formation of thin films, their structure and defects, and their various properties — mechanical, electrical, semiconducting, magnetic, and superconducting. With a primary focus on inorganic thin film materials, the book also ventures on organic materials such as self-assembled monolayers and Langmuir-Blodgett films.This book will be effective as a teaching or reference material in the various disciplines, ranging from Materials Science and Engineering, Electronic Science and Engineering, Electronic Materials and Components, Semiconductor Physics and Devices, to Applied Physics and more. The original Chinese publication has been instrumental in this purpose across many Chinese universities and colleges.

This book presents the recent advances in the field of nanoscale science and engineering of ferroelectric thin films. It comprises two main parts, i.e. electrical characterization in nanoscale ferroelectric capacitor, and nano domain manipulation and visualization in ferroelectric materials. Well known le'adingexperts both in relevant academia and industry over the world (U.S., Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Korea) were invited to contribute to each chapter. The first part under the title of electrical characterization in nanoscale ferroelectric capacitors starts with Chapter 1, "Testing and characterization of ferroelectric thin film capacitors," written by Dr. I. K. Yoo. The author provides a comprehensive review on basic concepts and terminologies of ferroelectric properties and their testing methods. This chapter also covers reliability issues in FeRAMs that are crucial for commercialization of high density memory products. In Chapter 2, "Size effects in ferroelectric film capacitors: role ofthe film thickness and capacitor size," Dr. I. Stolichnov discusses the size effects both in in-plane and out-of-plane dimensions of the ferroelectric thin film. The author successfully relates the electric performance and domain dynamics with proposed models of charge injection and stress induced phase transition. The author's findings present both a challenging problem and the clue to its solution of reliably predicting the switching properties for ultra-thin ferroelectric capacitors. In Chapter 3, "Ferroelectric thin films for memory applications: nanoscale characterization by scanning force microscopy," Prof. A.

Ferroelectric thin films continue to attract much attention due to their developing applications in memory devices, FeRAM, infrared sensors, piezoelectric sensors and actuators. This book, aimed at students, researchers and developers, gives detailed information about the basic properties of these materials and the associated device physics. The contributing authors are acknowledged experts in the field.

Ferroelectricity is one of the most studied phenomena in the scientific community due the importance of ferroelectric materials in a wide range of applications including high dielectric constant capacitors, pyroelectric devices, transducers for medical diagnostic, piezoelectric sonars, electrooptic light valves, electromechanical transducers and ferroelectric random access memories. Actually the ferroelectricity at nanoscale receives a great attention to the development of new technologies. The demand for ferroelectric systems with specific applications enforced the in-depth research in addition to the improvement of processing and characterization techniques. This book contains twenty two chapters and offers an up-to-date view of recent research into ferroelectricity. The chapters cover various formulations, their forms (bulk, thin films, ferroelectric liquid crystals), fabrication, properties, theoretical topics and ferroelectricity at nanoscale.