Effect of thermal strain on the ferroelectric phase transition in polycrystalline Ba _0.5Sr _0.5TiO ₃ thin films studied by Raman spectroscopy

We have applied Raman spectroscopy to study the influence of thermal strain on the vibrational properties of polycrystalline Ba _0.5Sr _0.5TiO ₃ films. The films were grown by rf magnetron sputtering on Pt/SiO ₂ surface using different host substrates: strontium titanate, sapphire, silicon, and vycor glass. These substrates provide a systematic change in the thermal strain while maintaining the same film microstructure. From the temperature dependence of the ferroelectric A ₁ soft phonon intensity, the ferroelectric phase transition temperature, T _c, was determined. We found that T _c decreases with increasing tensile stress in the films. This dependence is different from the theoretical predictions for epitaxial ferroelectric films. The reduction of the ferroelectric transition temperature with increasing biaxial tensile strain is attributed to the suppression of in-plane polarization due to the small lateral grain size in the films.