Regensburg 2022 – scientific programme
Parts | Days | Selection | Search | Updates | Downloads | Help
KFM: Fachverband Kristalline Festkörper und deren Mikrostruktur
KFM 19: Ferroics – Domains and Domain Walls 2
KFM 19.3: Talk
Wednesday, September 7, 2022, 15:40–16:00, H7
Interfacial Stabilization of Homochiral Ferroelectric Domain Walls in BiFeO3 — •Elzbieta Gradauskaite1, Quintin N. Meier2, Natascha Gray1, Marco Campanini3, Marta D. Rossell3, Manfred Fiebig1, and Morgan Trassin1 — 1Department of Materials, ETH Zurich, Switzerland — 2CEA Grenoble, LITEN, Grenoble, France — 3Electron Microscopy Center, Empa, Switzerland
Chirality is a concept central to all molecular interactions in biological systems. In the last decade its importance was also highlighted in condensed-matter physics, where spin textures at the homochiral ferromagnetic domain walls were shown to enable their deterministic current-driven motion. Nevertheless, only a few reports on polar chirality exist to this date, prompting increased research efforts on this important issue. Here, we report the stabilization of net chirality in BiFeO3 ferroelectric films grown on a fully in-plane-polarized ferroelectric layer of the Aurivillius phase. By introducing an in-plane-polarized epitaxial buffer we create polarization continuity and provide a symmetry breaking at the interface with the out-of-plane polarized BiFeO3. Scanning probe microscopy uncovers the stabilization of conceptually novel 251∘ domain walls in BiFeO3. Their unusual chirality is likely associated with the ferroelectric analog to the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction in magnets. Thus, we demonstrate a simple design combining perpendicular polar anisotropies for the effective stabilization of homochiral textures in ferroelectric thin films.