Bi3.4D0.6Ti3O12 (BDT) thin films have been successfully deposited on Pt(1 1 1)/Ti/SiO2/Si and p-type Si(1 0 0) substrates by a sol-gel spin coating process. The remanent polarization (2P(r)) and coercive field (2E(c)) values of the BDT thin film on Pt(1 1 1)/Ti/SiO2/Si substrate annealed at 700degreesC were 39 muC/cm(2) and 367 kV/cm at an electric field of 400 kV/cm, respectively. This 2P(r) value is larger than that of lanthanum-substituted Bi4Ti3O12 thin film and comparable with those of the samarium or neodymium-substituted Bi4Ti3O12 thin films. Moreover, the BDT thin film capacitors did not show a significant fatigue up to 1.45 x 10(10) switching cycles at a frequency of 1 MHz. The BDT thin films on p-type Si(1 0 0) substrates exhibit good capacitance-voltage (C- V) characteristics and a memory window of approximately 1.2 V with sweep voltage of +/- 10 V. The humps and valleys observed in C-V curves were interpreted by introducing charge injection from semiconductor to ferroelectrics. Furthermore, the frequency and the temperature dependency of C-V characteristics for the metal-ferroelectrics-semiconductor structured BDT thin films were measured. From these results, we suggest that the BDT thin film is one of the suitable dielectric materials for ferroelectric random access memory applications. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.