Bismuth ferrite (BFO) thin films were fabricated by R-F-magnetron sputtering deposition method on Pt/Ti/SiO2/Si(1 0 0) substrate. The effect of the thickness of BFO films varying from 85 to 2,80 nm on electrical properties was investigated. Saturated coercive fields were found to increase with the BFO film thickness. The dielectric constant of BFO thin films measured at I kHz decreased with decreasing thickness from 98 to 86, while tangent losses increased from 0.013 to 0.02 1. The presence of bismuth oxide at the interface between BFO films and Pt bottom electrodes was responsible for the high leakage currents in thin BFO thin films as was demonstrated by X-ray diffraction, grazing-incident X-ray diffraction, and secondary ion mass spectroscopy analysis. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.