In the present work, we have studied the effect of different deposition parameters, e.g., laser fluence as well as the pressure of oxygen during Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) of TiO2 on the electrical characteristics of the dielectric layer in order to optimize the deposition process. It was observed that the reliability and electrical properties of the MTOS capacitors were not significantly affected by the variation in the laser fluence but improved considerably with a decrease in the oxygen pressure during PLD within the range of values used in our experiments. The optimized MTOS capacitors exhibit higher breakdown voltage, lower leakage current as well as better reliability performance compared to the reference MOS capacitor. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.