Electrode field penetration: A new interpretation of tunneling currents in barium strontium titanate (BST) thin films

This paper shows that penetration of the applied electric field into the electrodes of a ferroelectric thin film capacitor produces both an interfacial capacitance and an effective mechanism for electron tunneling. The model predictions are compared with experimental results on Au-BST-SrRuO3 capacitors of varying thicknesses, and the agreement is excellent.