Structural insight into the optical and electro-optic properties of lead zirconate titanate for high-performance photonic devices

摘要

A series of Pb(ZrxTi1-x)O-3 thin films with compositions across the rhombohedral-tetragonal phase boundary (PZT, 0.2 <= x <= 0.8) have been developed by magnetron sputtering and their optical and electro-optic (EO) properties have been systematically studied. Our results reveal that the optical band gap, propagation loss, refractive index and EO performance of PZT films are strongly composition dependent. The PZT films with the composition at morphotropic phase boundary (MPB, x = 0.52) demonstrate largest EO coefficient (r(c) = 185.3 p.m./V), low propagation loss (3.6 dB/cm), and fast response time (5.3 mu s). Further studies show that the EO coefficients of the PZT52 thin films were almost invariant with the changes of testing temperatures (in 25-250 degrees C) and wavelengths (lambda = 532-1064 nm) and was retained nearly 83% when the testing frequency was increased from 10 Hz to 104 Hz. As an application example, a beam deflector prototype with 10 mu m thick PZT52 films has been successfully fabricated and demonstrates a large deflection angle of similar to 3.4 degrees at 100 V driving voltage. Our study gives an insight into the EO effects of PZT film systems, making them of interest for high-speed, low-driving-voltage and power efficient photonic devices for modern information telecommunication.