Ferroelctric lead zirconate titanate (Pb(Zr,Ti)O@sub 3@) thin films have been known for their applications in memory devices such as nonvolatile ferroelecric random access memory (FRAM) because of their high dielectric constants and bistable polarization. It is expected that PZT will improve the limitations in storage density encountered in conventional Si memory technology. Among the various dry etching techniques, great attention has been paid to the reactive ion etching (RIE) because it provides a high degree of anisotropy and good selectivity with the great process control. However, the RIE process degrades electrical properties, which are related to physical damage and chemical residue contamination. In this study, PZT thin films were etched by additive Ar, N@sub 2@, O@sub 2@ in CF@sub 4@/Cl@sub 2@ inductively coupled plasma. The etch rate is observed by various parameters. We also observed the effect of etching damage in PZT thin films during etching in inductively coupled plasma (ICP) etching system. SEM is used to survey the etching profile. We investigate that the recovery characteristics of etching damage used rapid thermal annealing (RTA) at various temperature. The polarization-electric field (P-E) curves were measured with a RT66A ferroelectric tester. The physical damages to the near surface of PZT are evaluated by atomic force microscopy (AFM) and x-ray diffraction (XRD) The etched surface was surveyed x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) analysis. This research was supported by the Consortium of Semiconductor Advanced Research (COSAR) as project No. 00-B6-C0-00-09-00-01