Role of ferroelectric polarization during growth of highly strained ferroelectrics revealed by in-situ x-ray diffraction

Abstract

Strain engineering of perovskite oxide thin films has proven to be an extremely powerful method for enhancing and inducing ferroelectric behavior. In ferroelectric thin films and superlattices, the polarization is intricately linked to crystal structure, but we show here that it can also play an important role in the growth process, influencing growth rates, relaxation mechanisms, electrical properties and domain structures. We have studied this effect in detail by focusing on the properties of BaTiO${}_3$ thin films grown on very thin layers of PbTiO${}_3$ using a combination of x-ray diffraction, piezoforce microscopy, electrical characterization and rapid in-situ x-ray diffraction reciprocal space maps during the growth using synchrotron radiation. Using a simple model we show that the changes in growth are driven by the energy cost for the top material to sustain the polarization imposed upon it by the underlying layer, and these effects may be expected to occur in other multilayer systems where polarization is present during growth. Our research motivates the concept of polarization engineering during the growth process as a new and complementary approach to strain engineering.

References in corpus (13)

• Physics of thin-film ferroelectric oxides
• Conduction through 71o domain walls in BiFeO3 thin films
• Conduction at domain walls in insulating Pb(Zr${}_{0.2}$Ti${}_{0.8}$)O${}_3$ thin films
• Ferroelectricity and tetragonality in ultrathin PbTiO3 films
• Unusual behaviour of the ferroelectric polarization in PbTiO${}_3$/SrTiO${}_3$ superlattices
• Tuning of the depolarization field and nanodomain structure in ferroelectric thin films
• Reversible Control of Magnetic Interactions by Electric Field in a Single Phase Material
• Ferroelectric PbTiO${}_3$/SrRuO${}_3$ superlattices with broken inversion symmetry
• Engineering polarization rotation in a ferroelectric superlattice
• Persistence of Island Arrangements During Layer-by-Layer Growth Revealed Using Coherent X-rays
• In-situ x-ray diffraction and the evolution of polarization during the growth of ferroelectric superlattices
• Domain Wall Orientations in Ferroelectric Superlattices Probed with Synchrotron X-Ray Diffraction
• Co-GISAXS as a New Technique to Investigate Surface Growth Dynamics

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Instrument for in situ hard x-ray nanobeam characterization during epitaxial crystallization and materials transformations