Crystalline oxide-based devices on silicon substrates

We have developed a process to grow epitaxial SrTiO₃ (STO) on Si. This STO/Si substrate can then be used as a pseudo substrate for the further deposition of many other oxides that are closely lattice matched to STO. The STO is grown by molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE) with a subsequent oxide layer deposited either by MBE or sol-gel deposition. The pseudo substrate has been used to demonstrate ferroelectric devices and piezoelectric devices. Ferroelectric capacitors using epitaxial BaTiO₃ (BTO) show a memory window of 0.5 V; however, the retention time for these devices is short because of the depolarization field caused by the silicon-oxide interface layer used to improve the band alignment of the BTO/Si interface. Surface acoustic wave (SAW) resonators using epitaxial Pb(Zr,Ti)O₃ show excellent response with a coupling coefficient of 4.6% and a velocity of 2,844 m/s.