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Lookup NU author(s): Raied Al-Hamadany, Professor Jon Goss, Professor Patrick Briddon, Professor Anthony O'Neill, Dr Mark Rayson
This is the final published version of an article that has been published in its final definitive form by American Institute of Physics, 2013.
For re-use rights please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.
Strontium titanate is a promising dielectric material for device applications including capacitors and gate dielectrics. However, oxygen vacancies, which are inevitable donor defects mobile under bias at room temperature, lead to undesirable leakage current in SrTiO3 thin films. Epitaxially grown SrTiO3 on lattice mismatched substrates leads to strained SrTiO3, inducing structural phase transitions from a cubosymmetric non-ferroelectric geometry to tetragonal and orthorhombic structures, depending upon the sign of the strain. In this study, density functional calculations have been performed to determine the impact of isotropic biaxial tensile strain in a (001) plane upon the phase of SrTiO3 and the activation energy for the migration of oxygen vacancies in such strained SrTiO3. The phase transition of the host material yields anisotropy in oxygen vacancy diffusion for diffusion within and between planes parallel to the strain. We found a general reduction in the barrier for diffusion within and normal to the plane of tensile strain. The inter-plane diffusion barrier reduces up to 25% at high values of strain. The variation in the barrier corresponding to in-plane diffusion is smaller in comparison to inter-plane diffusion. Finally, we reflect upon how the interplay between lattice strain with native defects plays a crucial role in the conduction mechanism of thin film, strained SrTiO3. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.
Author(s): Briddon PR; O'Neill AG; Rayson MJ; Goss JP; AL-Hamadany R; Mojarad SA
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Journal of Applied Physics
Year: 2013
Volume: 113
Issue: 22
Pages: 224108-1-224108-8
Online publication date: 13/06/2013
Acceptance date: 23/05/2013
Date deposited: 16/09/2016
ISSN (print): 0021-8979
ISSN (electronic): 1089-7550
Publisher: American Institute of Physics
URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4809656
DOI: 10.1063/1.4809656
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