Thesis (Ph. D. in Interdisciplinary Materials Sciences)--Vanderbilt University, Dec. 2008. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.

The present research work mainly focuses on the fabrication and characterization of single and multilayer thin films based on Bismuth Vanadate (BVO) and Bismuth Titanate (BTO). The multi-target laser ablation technique was used to fabricate single layer thin films of BVO, BVN and BTO; and multilayers composed of BVO and BTO in different structures. The fabricated thin films exhibited dense microstructure and a sharp interface with the substrate. The lattice strain, surface roughness and grain size could be varied as functions of composition and individual layer thickness in different structure fabricated. The optical properties were studied by spectroscopic ellipsometry and optical transmission spectra. The various models that were used for ellipsometric data analysis gave an excellent fitting to the experimental data. The optical constants were determined through multilayer analyses of the films. The band gap of these films was studied by spectroscopic ellipsometry and optical transmission. The optical studies carried out on BVO-BTO bilayer indicated the presence of an interfacial layer in between the BVO and BTO layer, whose refractive index was different from that of the individual layers and is attributed to different nature of the interfacial layer. The ferroelectric nature of BVO films was confirmed by P-E hysteresis loop studies under different applied fields and at various probing frequencies. The same was corroborated via the C-V measurements of these BVO films which exhibited butterfly shaped C-V characteristics. Fatigue studies in these films indicated that the switchable polarization is essentially constant through 105 cycles, after which it starts increasing probably due to the ionic conduction in BVO thin films. The dielectric response of undoped and Nb doped BVO as well as BVBT ML thin films were studied over a wide range of temperatures. The BVO films exhibited remarkable dielectric dispersion at low frequencies especially in the high temperature regime. Further, the frequency and temperature dependence of the dielectric, impedance, modulus and conductivity spectra of these films were investigated in detail. The ac conductivity was found to obey well the double power law in case of ML, indicating the different contributions to the conductivity, the low frequency conductivity being due to the short range translational hopping and the high frequency conductivity is due to the localized or reorientational hopping motion. DC leakage conduction in BVO, BVN and BVBT ML thin films was studied over a wide range of temperatures and applied electric fields. The experimental data were analyzed in light of different models to investigate the dc conduction mechanism in these films which were broadly classified into electrode limited and bulk limited conduction processes. In the case of BVO thin films the dc leakage current exhibited an ohmic nature at low electric fields followed by an onset of the space charge limited conduction (>1). Further in case of BVN films, three distinct regions were observed in I-V characteristics signifying different types of conduction processes in these films. In case of BVBT ML thin films, bulk limited PF mechanism was found to determine the conduction behavior at moderate electric fields. At higher electric fields, a trap filled region was observed which was followed by SCL conduction at higher fields. Therefore the present observation indicates the presence of more than one bulk limited conduction process in BVBT ML thin films. BVO thin films exhibiting good structure and dense morphology were successfully prepared on p-type Si by chemical solution decomposition technique. The C-V characteristics were evaluated for Au/BVO/Si MFS structure which showed a typical high frequency feature of a conventional MFIS structure.