A Study on Er3+ Substitution in Sol-gel BaTiO3 Thin Films Using X-ray Line Profile Analysis

Authors

  • Zeen Vee OOI School of Microelectronic Engineering, University Malaysia Perlis
  • Ala'eddin Ahmad SAIF School of Microelectronic Engineering, University Malaysia Perlis

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5755/j01.ms.23.3.16225

Keywords:

Ba1-xErxTiO3, sol-gel, X-ray line profile analysis, crystallite size, microstrain

Abstract

Perovskite erbium doped barium titanate (Ba1-xErxTiO3) thin films, at different x values, have been fabricated on SiO2/Si substrate and characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD) in the range of 20° to 60° to study the phase structure and geometric parameters for the films. XRD patterns show a broadening and shifting for the perovksite peaks toward higher angle due to Er3+ doping. The effect of Er3+ substitution into BaTiO3 lattice has been deeply investigated using X-ray line profine analysis through Scherrer equation, Williamson-Hall and size-strain plot (SSP) approaches. For all approaches used, it has been found that the crystallite size for the films decreases as the value of x increases, which is attributed to the relatively small Er3+ ionic size compared to Ba2+. In Williamson-Hall and SSP analysis, it is found that the microstrain created due to Er3+ doping causes distortion for the lattice and broadening for perovskite peaks as a result. Among all approaches used in this work, SSP shows to be the most suitable for this type of materials by giving the best fitted plots and goodness of fit R2 close to 1.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.ms.23.3.16225

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Published

2017-08-02

Issue

Section

ELECTRONIC AND OPTICAL MATERIALS