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KFM: Fachverband Kristalline Festkörper und deren Mikrostruktur

KFM 4: (Multi)ferroic States: From Fundamentals to Applications (II)

KFM 4.2: Vortrag

Montag, 17. März 2025, 11:45–12:00, H9

Transport behavior at domain walls in a depleted ferroelectric semiconductor — •Jiali He¹, Ruben Dragland¹, Leonie Richarz¹, Zewu Yan^2,3, Edith Bourret³, Gustau Catalan^4,5, and Dennis Meier¹ — ¹NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology — ²ETH Zurich, Switzerland — ³Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA — ⁴Institut Català de Nanociencia i Nanotecnologia (ICN2), Spain — ⁵Institucio Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats (ICREA), Spain

Electronic depletion regions naturally form at metal-semiconductor interface, which enables control of electrical currents in pn-junctions and is widely used in CMOS technology. Here, we expand the research towards ferroelectric domain walls, studying their functional properties under electronic depletion. Using ferroelectric p-type semiconductor ErMnO₃ as the model system, we deposit W electrodes and systematically investigate changes in the local transport behavior as the material is thinned down to the sub-10 nm range. Combined imaging experiments in terms of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and scanning probe microscopy (SPM) reveal that for a critical thickness, t_c, a steplike drop occurs in the electronic conduction, which we associate with the width of the depletion region at the W/ErMnO₃ interface. Interestingly, ferroelectric domain walls within the depletion region exhibit qualitatively different transport behavior than in the p-type regions. Our results give new insight into the physics of domain walls and demonstrate additional opportunities for controlling their electronic responses, which is of interest for domain-wall-based electronics.

Keywords: Ferroelectric domain walls; Metal-semiconductor contact; Electronic depletion region