We demonstrate improvement in fatigue resistance and other ferroelectric properties through cerium doping in sol–gel derived lead zirconate titanate thin films. We have studied frequency dependence of fatigue behavior and show that the loss of polarization due to fatigue follows a universal scaling behavior withN/f2,whereNis the number of switching cycles andfthe frequency. The origin of the scaling is attributed to the drift of oxygen vacancies, which is the rate limiting process in the growth of the interface layer responsible for fatigue. Empirical fits for both undoped and cerium-doped samples show that switchable polarization follows stretched exponential decay with time orN/f. Cerium doping is shown to improve fatigue resistance by impeding the motion of oxygen vacancies. ©1997 American Institute of Physics.