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Atomic-scale study of electric dipoles near charged and uncharged domain walls in ferroelectric films

Nature Materials volume 7, pages 57–61 (2008)Cite this article

Abstract

Ferroelectrics are materials exhibiting spontaneous electric polarization due to dipoles formed by displacements of charged ions inside the crystal unit cell. Their exceptional properties are exploited in a variety of microelectronic applications. As ferroelectricity is strongly influenced by surfaces, interfaces and domain boundaries, there is great interest in exploring how the local atomic structure affects the electric properties. Here, using the negative spherical-aberration imaging technique in an aberration-corrected transmission electron microscope, we investigate the cation–oxygen dipoles near 180∘ domain walls in epitaxial PbZr0.2Ti0.8O3 thin films on the atomic scale. The width and dipole distortion across a transversal wall and a longitudinal wall are measured, and on this basis the local polarization is calculated. For the first time, a large difference in atomic details between charged and uncharged domain walls is reported.

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Figure 1: Atomic-scale imaging of the electric dipoles formed by the relative displacements of the Zr/Ti cation columns and the O anion columns.
Figure 2: images of domain-wall segments of mixed type.
Figure 3: Image of an LDW segment.
Figure 4: Quantities of the structural and electric behaviour of the LDW as a function of the distance expressed in units of c from the central plane of the LDW shown in Fig. 3.

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Acknowledgements

The authors thank L. Houben for continuous support in using the software package for image mapping.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Solid State Research and Ernst Ruska Centre for Microscopy and Spectroscopy with Electrons, Research Centre Jülich, D-52425 Jülich, Germany

    Chun-Lin Jia, Shao-Bo Mi & Knut Urban

  2. Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics, Weinberg 2, D-06120 Halle, Germany

    Ionela Vrejoiu, Marin Alexe & Dietrich Hesse

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  1. Chun-Lin Jia
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Correspondence to Chun-Lin Jia.

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Jia, CL., Mi, SB., Urban, K. et al. Atomic-scale study of electric dipoles near charged and uncharged domain walls in ferroelectric films. Nature Mater 7, 57–61 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2080

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