Glancing angle deposition (GLAD) is a powerful technique to control the morphology and microstructure of thin film prepared by physical vapor deposition. Chromium (Cr) thin films were deposited on a polymer substrate by a sputtering technique using GLAD. The change in thickness and Vickers microhardness for the samples was observed with a change in the glancing angle. The adhesion properties of the critical load (Lc) by a scratch tester for the samples were also measured with varying the glancing angle. The critical load, thickness and Vickers microhardness for the samples decreased with an increase in the glancing angle. However, the thickness of the Cr thin film prepared at a 90o glancing angle showed a relatively large value of 50 % compared to that of the sample prepared at 0o. The results of X-ray diffraction and scanning electron microscopy demonstrated that the effect of GLAD on the microstructure of samples prepared by sputter technique was not as remarkable as the samples prepared by evaporation technique. The relatively small change in thickness and microstructure of the Cr thin film is due to the superior step-coverage properties of the sputter technique.

One of the weak points of the Cr-doped SZO is that until now, it has only been fabricated on perovskite substrates, whereas NiO-ReRAM devices have already been deposited on Si substrates. The fabrication of RAM devices on Si substrates is important for commercialization because conventional electronics are based mainly on silicon materials. Cr-doped ReRAM will find a wide range of applications in embedded systems or conventional memory device manufacturing processes if it can be fabricated on Si substrates. For application of the commercial memory device, Cr-doped SrZrO3 perovskite thin films were deposited on a SrRuO3 bottom electrode/Si(100)substrate using pulsed laser deposition. XRD peaks corresponding to the (112), (004) and (132) planes of both the SZO and SRO were observed with the highest intensity along the (112) direction. The positions of the SZO grains matched those of the SRO grains. A well-controlled interface between the SrZrO3:Cr perovskite and the SrRuO3 bottom electrode were fabricated, so that good resistive switching behavior was observed with an on/off ratio higher than 102. A pulse test showed the switching behavior of the Pt/SrZrO3:Cr/SrRuO3 device under a pulse of 10 kHz for 104 cycles. The resistive switching memory devices made of the Cr-doped SrZrO3 thin films deposited on Si substrates are expected to be more compatible with conventional Si-based electronics.