Abstract
The polarization decay process in SrBi2(Ta, Nb)2O9 capacitors and retention characteristics of a 288-bit ferroelectric memory device fabricated from SrBi2(Ta, Nb)2O9 were studied. The remanent polarization decay at room temperature showed good linearity when plotted against logarithmic retention time over a wide range of 10-3–105 s. The distribution of times to failure of a 288-bit memory was fit to a model having a linear relationship between log (log t f) and 1/T for the period of infant failures and to the Arrhenius model having the form log t f vs 1/T for the period of random failures, where t f is the time to failure and T is the temperature. The activation energy was found to be 0.35 eV for infant failures and 1.15 eV for random failures. Possible causes for the difference in activation energies are discussed.