Fatigue phenomena in thin ferroelectric films stimulated by repeated switching of the polarization

Abstract

With the use of techniques of Sawyer–Tower and Mertz method regularities of the origin of "fatigue" in thin ferroelectric films of lead titanate and lead zirconate titanate have been investigated in the fields above coercive. We propose a model to explain the experimentally observed switching-dependent fatigue processes by the motion of charged dislocations in an applied external alternating electric field.