Electrostatic topology of ferroelectric domains in YMnO${}_3$

Abstract

Trimerization-polarization domains in ferroelectric hexagonal YMnO${}_3$ were resolved in all three spatial dimensions by piezoresponse force microscopy. Their topology is dominated by electrostatic effects with a range of 100 unit cells and reflects the unusual electrostatic origin of the spontaneous polarization. The response of the domains to locally applied electric fields explains difficulties in transferring YMnO${}_3$ into a single-domain state. Our results demonstrate that the wealth of non-displacive mechanisms driving ferroelectricity that emerged from the research on multiferroics are a rich source of alternative types of domains and domain-switching phenomena.

References in corpus (2)

• Contrast Mechanisms for the Detection of Ferroelectric Domains with Scanning Force Microscopy
• Impact of the tip radius on the lateral resolution in piezoresponse force microscopy

Cited by in corpus (26)

• Anisotropic conductance at improper ferroelectric domain walls
• Conduction of topologically-protected charged ferroelectric domain walls
• Landau theory of topological defects in multiferroic hexagonal manganites
• From multiferroics to cosmology: Scaling behaviour and beyond in the hexagonal manganites
• Topological defects as relics of emergent continuous symmetry and Higgs condensation of disorder in ferroelectrics
• Structural Domain Walls in Polar Hexagonal Manganites
• Collective magnetism at multiferroic vortex domain walls
• Polarization control with plasmonic antenna-tips: A universal approach for optical nano-crystallography and vector-field imaging
• Observation of persistent centrosymmetricity in the hexagonal manganite family
• Unfolding of vortices into topological stripes in a multiferroic material
• Electronic bulk and domain wall properties in B-site doped hexagonal ErMnO${}_3$
• Unconventional order-disorder phase transition in improper ferroelectric hexagonal manganites
• Conductivity contrast and tunneling charge transport in the vortex-like ferroelectric domain patterns of multiferroic hexagonal YMnO3
• Evolution of the domain topology in a ferroelectric
• Frequency dependent polarisation switching in h-ErMnO${}_3$
• Epitaxy of hexagonal ABO${}_3$ quantum materials
• Imaging and characterization of conducting ferroelectric domain walls by photoemission electron microscopy
• Contact-free reversible switching of improper ferroelectric domains by electron and ion irradiation
• Epitaxial integration of improper ferroelectric h-YMnO${}_3$ thin films in heterostructures
• Local control of improper ferroelectric domains in YMnO${}_3$
• Ferro-rotational domain walls revealed by electric quadrupole second harmonic generation microscopy
• Identification and mechanical control of ferroelastic domain structure in rhombohedral CaMn${}_7$O${}_{12}$
• Insulating improper ferroelectric domain walls as robust barrier layer capacitors
• Combinatorial model for the ferroelectric domain-network formation in hexagonal manganites
• Moiré Fringes in Conductive Atomic Force Microscopy
• Charged domain boundaries stabilized by translational symmetry breaking in the hybrid improper ferroelectric Ca${}_{3-x}$Sr${}_x$Ti${}_2$O${}_7$