Berlin 2015 – scientific programme

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DF: Fachverband Dielektrische Festkörper

DF 5: Poster Session on Ferroic Domain Walls - Multiferroics (DF with KR/MA/TT)

DF 5.2: Poster

Monday, March 16, 2015, 19:00–21:00, Poster C

Advanced characterization of functional ferroelectric domain walls by X-ray photoelectron emission microscopy — •Jakob Schaab¹, Ingo P. Krug^2,3, Zewu Yan⁴, Edith Bourret⁴, Claus M. Schneider³, Ramamoorthy Ramesh^4,5, Manfred Fiebig¹, and Dennis Meier¹ — ¹Department of Materials, ETH Zürich — ²Institut für Optik und Atomare Physik, TU Berlin — ³Forschungszentrum Jülich, PGI-6 — ⁴Materials Science Division, LBNL Berkeley — ⁵Department of Materials Science and Engineering, UC Berkeley

The observation of anomalous electronic transport at ferroelectric domain walls and its significance for nano-electronics triggered tremendous scientific interest. To date, the transport behavior and potential barriers at domain walls have been predominantly scrutinized by scanning probes. This, however, convolutes the intrinsic electronic properties with contact resistance and inhomogeneous probe fields, so that the detailed origin of the behavior remains obscured.

Here, we report on the capability of high-resolution X-ray photoemission electron microscopy (X-PEEM) to image and characterize ferroelectric domain walls contact-free and with nanometer resolution. In the ferroelectric semiconductor ErMnO3, we visualize ferroelectric domain walls by exploiting photo-induced charging effects and generate an electronic conduction map by analyzing the kinetic energy of photoelectrons. With this we open a pathway for non-destructive and element-specific studies of electronic and chemical domain-wall structures bypassing previous experimental limitations and significantly expanding the accessible parameter space.