Nucleation and growth of highly oriented lead titanate thin films prepared by a sol-gel method

Highly (100)-oriented PbTiO3 thin films were grown on Pt/Ti/Si(100) substrates by a sol-gel method. The nucleation and growth processes were investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and atomic force microscopy (AFM), respectively. The chemical bondings and chemical composition of the films were also determined by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). A crystallization mechanism for controlling the film characteristics is presented.