Smallest 90o domains in epitaxial ferroelectric films

Abstract

Ferroelectrics display spontaneous and switchable electrical polarization. Until recently, ferroelectricity was believed to disappear at the nanoscale; now, nano-ferroelectrics are being considered in numerous applications. This renewed interest was partly fuelled by the observation of ferroelectric domains in films of a few unit cells thickness, promising further size reduction of ferroelectric devices. It turns out that at reduced scales and dimensionalities the material's properties depend crucially on the intricacies of domain formation, that is, the way the crystal splits into regions with polarization oriented along the different energetically equivalent directions, typically at 180o and 90o from each other. Here we present a step forward in the manipulation and control of ferroelectric domains by the growth of thin films with regular self-patterned arrays of 90o domains only 7 nm wide. This is the narrowest width for 90o domains in epitaxial ferroelectrics that preserves the film lateral coherence, independently of the substrate.

arXiv comment9 pages (4 two-column text pages + 4 figures + 1 supplementary figure). Source is 1 TeX file + 5 figures in PDF format

References in corpus (2)

• Ab initio study of ferroelectric domain walls in PbTiO3
• Polar domains in lead titanate films under tensile strain

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