Higher Order Ferroic Switching Induced by Scanning Force Microscopy

Abstract

We present the observation of ferroelastoelectric switching in a ferroelectric material. It is achieved in barium titanate thin film by simultaneously applying electric field and compressive stress with the tip of a scanning force microscope. For low compressive stresses, the presented measurements reveal classical ferroelectric domain reversal, i.e., the spontaneous polarization is aligned parallel to the applied electric field. However, for high compressive stresses the direction of polarization after switching is antiparallel to the poling field, demonstrating ferroelastoelectric switching.

Ionic field effect and memristive phenomena in single-point ferroelectric domain switching

“…Similar behaviour has been observed by the number of scientific groups and has been attributed to charge injection 30,32,37 and ferroelastoelectric switching due to mechanical stress under the tip 31 . In this particular case, ferroelastic explanation is unlikely because the switching kinetics in our investigations was not dependent on the mechanical characteristics of the used tip and load on the tip, which is defined by the value of SPM set point parameter.…”

“…Furthermore, the interplay between switching and ionic dynamics allows information storage and logical operation on a single domain level. Finally, we note that universality of screening phenomena for ferroelectrics suggest that similar phenomena can occur in other materials, as indeed supported by observation of non-cylindrical domains is other ferroelectric and even relaxor-ferroelectric materials 31,32,38 . …”

“…For LiNbO 3 with 3m symmetry, the strain leads to the renormalization of coefficient a 3 in the Landau-GinzburgDevonshire theory free energy term, a 3 P 2 z =2, namely a 3 ¼ a 0 þ 2 q 31 (u 11 þ u 22 ) þ 2q 33 u 33 , where q ijkl is the electrostriction strain tensor. The evident form of the a 3 (r, z) variation caused by the 'bare' tip field is a 3 ¼a 0 þ 2q 31 is shown in Fig. 5a at y ¼ 0, z ¼ 0 and LiNbO 3 parameters at room temperature.…”

“…In the lithium niobate, domains usually had regular hexagonal or circular shape 17,22,29 . In some cases, shape of the domains contained partially backswitched areas in the centre and along the path of grounded tip 25,[30][31][32] .…”

Sequential piezoresponse force microscopy and the ‘small-data’ problem

“…8 As far as Scanning Probe Microscopy (SPM) is concerned, the recent developments in functional imaging-modes have been paralleled with a growing interest in studying various local phenomena. A few examples of such phenomena include electrical conduction at ferroelectric/ferroelastic domain walls, [9][10][11][12] polarization dynamics in ferroelectrics, [13][14][15][16][17][18] temperature/time/ voltage dependent study of ergodicity (time dependence) of polarization in relaxor-ferroelectrics, 14,19 and local magnetoelectricity. [20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28] Probing such local phenomena essentially requires measuring a response I ij (x i , P j ) on an X × Y grid, as a function of a spectral parameter P j (j = 1,…,M); where x i is the spatial coordinate index (i = 1,…,N; N = X × Y).…”