Signal Form Influences on the Fatigue Behavior of PZT Thin Film Capacitors

Fatigue is a commonly known failure mechanism in Pt/PZT/Pt thin film capacitors. The remnant polarization shows a fast drop after 105 to 106 bipolar switching cycles. The reason for this loss of switchable polarization is mainly unknown. We studied the influence of the used switching signal, especially the influence of its shape. A great number of fatigue measurements had to be taken to get reliable data. In order to reduce the measuring time a way to extrapolate the fatigue curve by one decade is introduced and show to be accurate with an error of below 1%. It is also shown that the leading edge of the switching signal has an influence on the fatigue behavior of Pt/PZT/Pt thin films.