Dresden 2017 – scientific programme

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MA: Fachverband Magnetismus

MA 9: Novel Functionality and Topology-Driven Phenomena in Ferroics and Correlated Electron Systems (DF with MA, KR, MI, TT and DS)

MA 9.1: Invited Talk

Monday, March 20, 2017, 15:00–15:30, HSZ 02

Ferroelectric domain walls: from conductors to insulators and back again — •Petro Maksymovych — Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, USA

The root cause of uncertainty around conducting ferroelectric domain walls (DWs) is the contact problem, which may be intrinsic to the polarization topology and may not be resolved by doping ferroelectric films. We revealed how contact effects are responsible for apparent DW conductance in ultrathin BiFeO3, wherein the DW electrostatically gates the interface, but is not itself a conductor. At the same time, we explored AC conductance of DWs to eliminate contact effects. DWs in both BiFeO3 and Pb(Zr0.2Ti0.8)O3 revealed robust conductivity at 3 GHz with remarkably large values of 2-6 S/m. Using the Ginzburg-Landau-Devonshire model for ferroelectric semiconductor, the effect is traced to local charge of nominally straight DWs due to defect-induced roughening and/or an intrinsic flexoelectric effect. Microwave regime opens new opportunities for device integration and carrier-density and dielectric effects at DWs.

Support provided by U.S. Department of Energy, BES, Materials Science and Technology Division. Microscopy experiments performed at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, a DOE Office of Science User Facility.

[1] R. K. Vasudevan, et al., and P. Maksymovych, submitted (2016) [2] A. Tselev, P. Yu, Y. Cao, L. R. Dedon, L. W. Martin, S. V. Kalinin, and P. Maksymovych, Nat. Comms., 7 (2016) 11630.