IMF2017

Ferroelectrics are a special class of materials which undergo spontaneous electric polarization and possess reversible polarization under an applied electric field due to their inherent ferroelectric, dielectric and optical properties. Barium titanate, BaTiO₃ (BTO) is a technologically important material because of its variety of applications in microwave devices, multilayer capacitors, non-volatile ferroelectric memories, dynamic random access memories (DRAM), micro-electromechanical- system (MEMS), and so on. Recently, research has been started on studying the effect of top electrodes on the various properties of ferroelectric thin films such as photovoltaic properties however, detailed study on the effect of different metal nanoclusters on the electrical properties of the ferroelectric material is significantly required. In the current work, polycrystalline BTO thin films have been synthesized on Pt/Ti/SiO₂/Si substrates using a versatile low temperature technique called Sol-gel hydrothermal method and different metal nanoclusters (Au, Ag, Cu, Al, In and W) have been fabricated over the surface of BTO thin film using thermal evaporation technique. The effect of metal nanoclusters on the electrical and ferroelectric properties of BTO thin films have been studied. The current conduction mechanism is found to be dependent on the work function of different metal nanoclusters deposited over BTO thin film. The induced ferroelectric polarization also exhibited significant change due to difference in surface charge collection with different metal nanoclusters.