Dresden 2017 – scientific programme

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MA: Fachverband Magnetismus

MA 25: Ferroics - Domains, Domain Walls and Skyrmions I

MA 25.6: Talk

Tuesday, March 21, 2017, 11:15–11:30, WIL B321

Functional electronic inversion layers at ferroelectric domain walls — •Jakob Schaab¹, Julia A. Mundy², Yu Kumagai¹, Andres Cano³, Massimiliano Stengel⁴, Darrel G. Schlom², David A. Muller², Ramamoorthy Ramesh⁵, Manfred Fiebig¹, Nicola A. Spaldin¹, and Dennis Meier⁶ — ¹ETH Zürich — ²Cornell University — ³CNRS, Université de Bordeaux — ⁴ICMAB-CSIC Barcelona — ⁵UC Berkeley — ⁶NTNU Trondheim

Ferroelectric domain walls hold great promise as functional 2D-materials because of their unusual electronic properties. Particularly intriguing are the so-called charged walls where a polarity mismatch causes local, diverging electrostatic potentials requiring charge compensation and hence a change in the electronic structure. These walls can exhibit significantly enhanced conductivity and serve as a circuit path. The development of all-domain-wall devices, however, also requires walls with controllable output to emulate electronic nano-components such as diodes and transistors.

Here, we will present electric-field control of the electronic transport at ferroelectric domain walls. We reversibly switch from resistive to conductive behavior at charged walls in semiconducting ErMnO₃. We relate the transition to the formation - and eventual activation - of an inversion layer that acts as the channel for the charge transport. Our conductive atomic force microscopy (cAFM) and electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS) data provide new insight to the domain-wall physics in ferroelectrics and foreshadow the possibility to design elementary digital components for all-domain-wall circuitry.