Drift of charged defects in local fields as aging mechanism in ferroelectrics

Abstract

Point defect migration is considered as a mechanism for aging in ferroelectrics. Numerical results are given for the coupled problems of point defect migration and electrostatic energy relaxation in a 2D domain configuration. The peak values of the clamping pressure at domain walls are in the range of $10^6$ Pa, which corresponds to macroscopically observed coercive stresses in perovskite ferroelectrics. The effect is compared to mechanisms involving orientational reordering of defect dipoles in the bulk of domains. Domain clamping is significantly stronger in the drift mechanism than in the orientational picture for the same material parameters.

arXiv comment24 pages, 12 figures, accepted to Physical Review B

References in corpus (2)

• Physics of thin-film ferroelectric oxides
• Domain wall roughness in epitaxial ferroelectric PbZr0.2Ti0.8O3 thin films

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