Unusual polarization patterns in flat epitaxial ferroelectric nanoparticles

Abstract

Interest in epitaxial ferroelectric nanoislands was growing rapidly in recent years driven by their potential for devices, especially ultradense memories. Recent advances in the "bottom- up" (self-assembly) nanometer scale techniques have opened up the opportunities of fabricating high-quality epitaxial ferroelectric nanoislands with extremely small thickness and lateral size on the order of 1 nm and 20 nm, respectively. On the other hand, recent emergence of powerful probes, such as piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM), has enabled imaging of a local domain structure with sub-10 nm resolution. In spite of those developments, a clear understanding of the polarization patterns in epitaxial ferroelectric nanoislands is lacking, and some important characteristics, like a critical lateral size for ferroelectricity, are not yet established. Here, we perform ab-initio studies of non-electroded epitaxial Pb(Zr0.5Ti0.5)O3 and BaTiO3 nanoislands and show the existence of novel polarization patterns driven by the misfit strains and/or anisotropy energy. The results allow interpretation of the data and design of the ferroelectric nanostructures with tailored response to external field.

7 pages, 7 figures

References in corpus (9)

• Spontaneous Skyrmion Ground States in Magnetic Metals
• First-principles theory of ferroelectric phase transitions for perovskites: The case of BaTiO3
• Finite-temperature properties of PZT alloys from first principles
• Ultrathin films of ferroelectric solid solutions under residual depolarizing field
• Abrupt appearance of the domain pattern and fatigue of thin ferroelectric films
• Atomistic treatment of depolarizing energy and field in ferroelectric nanostructures
• Ferroelectricity in Pb(Zr${}_{0.5}$Ti${}_{0.5}$)O${}_3$ thin films: critical thickness and 180${}^{\circ }$ stripe domains
• Domain evolution of BaTiO3 ultrathin films under electric field: a first-principles study
• Properties of Pb(Zr,Ti)O${}_3$ ultrathin films under stress-free and open-circuit electrical boundary conditions

Cited by in corpus (12)

• High density array of epitaxial BiFeO3 nanodots with robust and reversibly switchable topological domain states
• A 2D ferroelectric vortex lattice in twisted BaTiO3 freestanding layers
• Toroidal ferroelectricity in PbTiO3 nanoparticles
• Topological phase transformations and intrinsic size effects in ferroelectric nanoparticles
• Effect of a built-in electric field in asymmetric ferroelectric tunnel junctions
• Manipulating Ferroelectric Domains in Nanostructures Under Electron Beams
• Ising lines: natural topological defects within chiral ferroelectric domain walls
• Nano-actuator concepts based on ferroelectric switching
• Electromechanical control of polarization vortex ordering in an interacting ferroelectric-dielectric composite dimer
• Domain alignment within ferroelectric/dielectric PbTiO${}_3$/SrTiO${}_3$ superlattice nanostructures
• Unconventional Hall effect and magnetoresistance induced by metallic ferroaxial ordering
• Vortex states in a PbTiO${}_3$ ferroelectric cylinder