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Direct imaging of the spatial and energy distribution of nucleation centres in ferroelectric materials

Nature Materials volume 7, pages 209–215 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

Macroscopic ferroelectric polarization switching, similar to other first-order phase transitions, is controlled by nucleation centres. Despite 50 years of extensive theoretical and experimental effort, the microstructural origins of the Landauer paradox, that is, the experimentally observed low values of coercive fields in ferroelectrics corresponding to implausibly large nucleation activation energies, are still a mystery. Here, we develop an approach to visualize the nucleation centres controlling polarization switching processes with nanometre resolution, determine their spatial and energy distribution and correlate them to local microstructure. The random-bond and random-field components of the disorder potential are extracted from positive and negative nucleation biases. Observation of enhanced nucleation activity at the 90∘ domain wall boundaries and intersections combined with phase-field modelling identifies them as a class of nucleation centres that control switching in structural-defect-free materials.

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Figure 1: Imaging local nucleation biases in ferroelectric thin films.
Figure 2: The role of defects on the energetics of polarization switching.
Figure 3: Reconstruction of random-field and random-bond disorder components.
Figure 4: Phase-field modelling of the domain structure and polarization and field distributions in the vicinity of the ferroelastic domain.
Figure 5: Phase-field modelling of the effect of domain boundaries on nucleation bias.

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Acknowledgements

Research sponsored by the Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, US Department of Energy (S.J., A.P.B. and S.V.K.) and the ORNL LDRD program (B.J.R.). J.X.Z., S.C. and L.-Q.C. at Penn State acknowledge the financial support of the NSF under DMR-0507146 and DOE under DE-FG02-07ER46417. Multiple discussions with A. Tagantsev and J. Scott are gratefully acknowledged.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Materials Science and Technology Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, USA

    Stephen Jesse, Brian J. Rodriguez & Sergei V. Kalinin

  2. The Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, USA

    Stephen Jesse, Brian J. Rodriguez, Arthur P. Baddorf & Sergei V. Kalinin

  3. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA

    Samrat Choudhury, Jingxian Zhang & Long-Qing Chen

  4. Max Plank Institute of Microstructure Physics, 06120 Halle, Germany

    Ionela Vrejoiu, Dietrich Hesse & Marin Alexe

  5. Institute for Problems of Materials Science, National Academy of Science of Ukraine, 3, Krjijanovskogo, 03142 Kiev, Ukraine

    Eugene A. Eliseev

  6. V. Lashkaryov Institute of Semiconductor Physics, National Academy of Science of Ukraine, 41, pr. Nauki, 03028 Kiev, Ukraine

    Anna N. Morozovska

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  1. Stephen Jesse
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Correspondence to Sergei V. Kalinin.

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Jesse, S., Rodriguez, B., Choudhury, S. et al. Direct imaging of the spatial and energy distribution of nucleation centres in ferroelectric materials. Nature Mater 7, 209–215 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2114

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