Facilitation of Ferroelectric Switching via Mechanical Manipulation of Hierarchical Nanoscale Domain Structures

Zibin Chen, Liang Hong, Feifei Wang, Simon P. Ringer, Long-Qing Chen, Haosu Luo, and Xiaozhou Liao

Phys. Rev. Lett. 118, 017601 – Published 6 January 2017

Abstract

Heterogeneous ferroelastic transition that produces hierarchical 90° tetragonal nanodomains via mechanical loading and its effect on facilitating ferroelectric domain switching in relaxor-based ferroelectrics were explored. Combining in situ electron microscopy characterization and phase-field modeling, we reveal the nature of the transition process and discover that the transition lowers by 40% the electrical loading threshold needed for ferroelectric domain switching. Our results advance the fundamental understanding of ferroelectric domain switching behavior.

Received 14 June 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.017601

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Ferroelectric domains Ferroelectricity

Electron microscopy Phase-field modeling

Condensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

Zibin Chen¹, Liang Hong^2,†, Feifei Wang³, Simon P. Ringer^1,4, Long-Qing Chen², Haosu Luo⁵, and Xiaozhou Liao^1,*

¹School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia
²Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA
³Key Laboratory of Optoelectronic Material and Device, Department of Physics, Shanghai Normal University, Shanghai 200234, China
⁴Australian Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology, The University of Sydney, New South Wales 2006, Australia
⁵Key Laboratory of Inorganic Functional Materials and Devices, Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 200050, China

^*To whom all correspondence should be addressed. Xiaozhou.liao@sydney.edu.au
^†Present address: Department of Materials Science and Nanoengineering, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77005, USA.

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Vol. 118, Iss. 1 — 6 January 2017

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Images

Figure 1
(a) Schematic diagram of the experimental setup. A bulk PMN-38%PT matrix with thin pillars was fixed on a grounded Cu platform using Pt deposition. A conductive tip connected to the electrical characterization module (ECM) acts as an indenter and electro for mechanical and electrical loading. The actual allocation of the pillar and the tip was captured in the enlarged TEM image. (b) A dark-field TEM image and an STEM-HAADF image showing a head-to-tail tetragonal domain configuration across a domain boundary as indicated in the green box. The domain wall is indicated using the blue line while polarizations are indicated using large purple and yellow vectors. The inset purple and yellow boxes show the enlarged polarizations in the $P_{3}^{+}$ and $P_{1}^{-}$ domain area, respectively.
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Figure 2
(a)–(e) A series of images showing the evolution of ferroelastic domains under mechanical excitation. At the bottom of each image is the schematic drawing of the domain structure in the area within the green box indicated in (a). (f) Schematic of the introduction of four possible types of polarization by applying compression along [001] to the original polarization along [001]. (g) A load or bias versus time curve showing the real-time application of mechanical load with zero bias. Labels (a) to (e) correspond to the image order from (a) to (e) and indicate their relative position in the curve.
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Figure 3
Phase-field simulation and calculation on kinetic domain transformation in PMN-38%PT single crystal. (a) Predicted ferroelastic energy of tetragonal domains in a PMN-38%PT single crystal. Two local minimum points in the wavy red curve represent the ferroelastic energy for a constrained $c$ domain and $a$ domain, respectively. The local maximum in the middle of the red curve represents the energy required (energy barrier) for rotating a single $c$ domain to an $a$ domain. (b),(c),(d) Domain transition under electrical loading only, mechanical loading only, and combined mechanical and electrical loading, respectively.
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Figure 4
(a)–(d) A series of experimental images (extracted from the Supplemental Material [31], movie 3) showing the evolution of ferroelastic domains under electrical loading with mechanical loading. The 180° ferroelectric domain wall $P_{1}^{+} − P_{1}^{-}$ is indicated by the white arrow in (d). (e)–(k) illustrations of the switching process in an originally $P_{3}^{+}$ microdomain, for the initial state (e), mechanical loading only (f),(g), low electrical bias with mechanical loading (h)–(j), high electrical bias with mechanical loading (k),(l), and predicted higher electric bias with mechanical loading (m). (n) Switched domain length verses bias graph comparing the domain switching capabilities of electrical loading with and without mechanical loading in $P_{3}^{+}$ microdomains and $P_{1}^{-}$ microdomains (the inset graph).
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