Piezoelectrics: Monoclinic (K,Na)NbO3 Ferroelectric Phase in Epitaxial Films (Adv. Electron. Mater. 10/2017)

Ferroelectric domain structures in SrBi2Nb2O9 epitaxial thin films: Electron microscopy and phase-field simulations

Ferroelectric domain structures of (001)SrBi2Nb2O9 epitaxial films, investigated using both transmission electron microscopy and phase-field simulations, are reported. Experiment and numerical simulation both reveal that the domain structures consist of irregularly shaped domains with curved domain walls. It is shown that the elastic contribution to domain structures can be neglected in SrBi2Nb...

Ferroelectric switching in epitaxial GeTe films

Domain wall roughness in epitaxial ferroelectric PbZr0.2Ti0.8O3 thin films.

The static configuration of ferroelectric domain walls was investigated using atomic force microscopy on epitaxial PbZr(0.2)Ti(0.8)O(3) thin films. Measurements of domain wall roughness reveal a power-law growth of the correlation function of relative displacements B(L) alpha L(2zeta) with zeta approximately 0.26 at short length scales L, followed by an apparent saturation at large L. In the sa...

Imaging three-dimensional polarization in epitaxial polydomain ferroelectric thin films

Voltage-modulated scanning force microscopy ~Piezoresponse microscopy! is applied to investigate the domain structure in epitaxial PbZr0.2Ti0.8O3 ferroelectric thin films grown on ~001! SrTiO3. By monitoring the vertical and lateral differential signals from the photodetector of the atomic force microscope it is possible to separate out and observe the out-of-plane and in-plane polarization vec...

Suppression of creep-regime dynamics in epitaxial ferroelectric BiFeO3 films

Switching dynamics of ferroelectric materials are governed by the response of domain walls to applied electric field. In epitaxial ferroelectric films, thermally-activated 'creep' motion plays a significant role in domain wall dynamics, and accordingly, detailed understanding of the system's switching properties requires that this creep motion be taken into account. Despite this importance, few...