Ferroelectric Domain Walls in BaTiO₃: Fingerprints in XRPD Diagrams and Quantitative HRTEM Image Analysis

Abstract

The structure of ferroelectric domain walls in BaTiO3 has been investigated through two complementary approaches, a global one by the fine analysis of X-ray diffraction patterns, the other essentially local via a quantitative image analysis method developed and applied to High Resolution Transmission Electron Microscopy images. These two original approaches converge towards a clear description of 90○ walls which are shown to be a 4–6 nm wide region where the crystallographic discontinuity is accommodated by irregular atomic displacements. The results given here demonstrate that the usual structural theoretical description of walls commonly accepted for energy calculations are far too simplistic. The two underlying methodologies which have been developed to carry out these approaches can possibly be applied to other ferroelectrics, but without any doubt to other systems where twins or coherent interfaces are expected.

Domain wall nanoelectronics

“…Meanwhile, Floquet et al (1997) combined high-resolution transmission electron microscopy with x-ray diffraction to measure a width of 5 nm for the 90 walls of BaTiO 3 . Shilo, Ravichandran, and Bhattacharya (2004) used atomic force microscopy (AFM) to measure the same type of walls in PbTiO 3 ; although the tip radius of scanning probe microscopes (AFM, PFM) is typically 10 nm, a careful statistical analysis allowed the intrinsic domain widths of ferroelectric and ferroelastic 90 walls to be extracted; a wide range of thicknesses between 1 and 5 nm were recorded.…”

Ab initiostudy of ferroelectric domain walls inPbTiO3

“…Most studies so far have used high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) to obtain direct images of the domain walls. [7][8][9][10][11] In a detailed study of 90…”

Theoretical Study of Ferroelectric and Optical Properties in the 180� Ferroelectric Domain Wall of Tetragonal BaTiO3

“…In recent years, a number of experimental investigations was reported focusing on characterizing the ferroelectric domains and domain walls in BaTiO 3 [8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] as well as in other ferroelectric materials [17][18][19][20]. Transmission electron microscopy, X-ray spectroscopy, as well as scanning force microcopy have been applied with very limited success though: In fact, none of these inspections was able to deliver some experimental data on the physical properties within the 180 domain wall of BaTiO 3 .…”