Non-Ising domain walls in c-phase ferroelectric lead titanate thin films
Abstract
Ferroelectrics are technologically important, with wide application in micromechanical systems, nonlinear optics, and information storage. Recent discoveries of exotic polarization textures in these materials, which can strongly influence their properties, have brought to the forefront questions about the nature of their domain walls: long believed to be primarily Ising, with locally null polarization. Here, combining three complementary techniques - second-harmonic generation microscopy, piezoresponse force microscopy, and transmission electron microscopy - to cover all the relevant length scales, we reveal the Néel character (non-Ising polarization oriented perpendicular to the wall) of 180° domain walls in c-phase tetragonal ferroelectric lead titanate epitaxial thin films, for both artificial and intrinsic domains at room temperature. Furthermore, we show that variations in the domain density - detected both optically and via local piezoresponse and then quantified by radial autocorrelation analysis - can give us insight into the underlying defect potential present in these materials.
Citation
Weymann , C , Cherifi-Hertel , S , Lichtensteiger , C , Gaponenko , I , Dorkenoo , K D , Naden , A B & Paruch , P 2022 , ' Non-Ising domain walls in c -phase ferroelectric lead titanate thin films ' , Physical Review B , vol. 106 , no. 24 , L241404 . https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.106.L241404
Publication
Physical Review B
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
2469-9950Type
Journal item
Rights
Copyright © 2022 The Author(s). Open Access articles. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.
Description
Funding: This work was supported by Division II of the Swiss National Science Foundation under Project No. 200021_178782. A.B.N. gratefully acknowledges support from the EPSRC (Grants No. EP/R023751/1 and No. EP/L017008/1). S.C.-H. acknowledges the support of the French Agence Nationale pour la Recherche (ANR) through Grant No. ANR-18-CE92-0052 and the Programme d'Investissement d'Avenir ANR-10-IDEX-0002-02 of the University of Strasbourg under Contract No. ANR-11-LABX-0058_NIE. C.L. acknowledges the support from Division II of the Swiss National Science Foundation under Project No. 200021_200636.Collections
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