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Polarization charge as a reconfigurable quasi-dopant in ferroelectric thin films

Nature Nanotechnology volume 10, pages 614–618 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

Impurity elements used as dopants are essential to semiconductor technology for controlling the concentration of charge carriers. Their location in the semiconductor crystal is determined during the fabrication process and remains fixed. However, another possibility exists1,2,3 whereby the concentration of charge carriers is modified using polarization charge as a quasi-dopant, which implies the possibility to write, displace, erase and re-create channels having a metallic-type conductivity inside a wide-bandgap semiconductor matrix. Polarization-charge doping is achieved in ferroelectrics by the creation of charged domain walls2,4,5. The intentional creation of stable charged domain walls has so far only been reported in BaTiO3 single crystals6, with a process that involves cooling the material through its phase transition under a strong electric bias, but this is not a viable technology when real-time reconfigurability is sought in working devices. Here, we demonstrate a technique allowing the creation and nanoscale manipulation of charged domain walls and their action as a real-time doping activator in ferroelectric thin films. Stable individual and multiple conductive channels with various lengths from 3 μm to 100 nm were created, erased and recreated in another location, and their high metallic-type conductivity was verified. This takes the idea of hardware reconfigurable electronics7 one step forward.

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Figure 1: Principle of controlled CDW creation in a ferroelectric thin film.
Figure 2: Controlled ferroelectric switching towards mono-domain states.
Figure 3: Polarization charge as a quasi-dopant.
Figure 4: Reconfigurable nanoscale CDWs.
Figure 5: Metallic-like conductivity of CDWs.

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Acknowledgements

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Research Council under the EU 7th Framework Program (FP7/2007–2013)/ERC grant agreement no 268058, MOBILE-W and ERC-2013-PoC grant agreement no. 620193, MOBILE2DG. The Swiss National Science Foundation (grants nos. 200020_144454 and 200020_156082) and the Section for Development and Cooperation of the Swiss Foreign Ministry (Agreement CH-3-SMm-01/02 Swiss–Lithuania cooperation) are acknowledged for additional financial support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ceramics Laboratory, EPFL Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, CH-1015, Switzerland

    Arnaud Crassous, Tomas Sluka, Alexander K. Tagantsev & Nava Setter

  2. DPMC, University of Geneva, 24 Quai Ernest Ansermet, Geneva 4, 1211, Switzerland

    Tomas Sluka

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  1. Arnaud Crassous
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  2. Tomas Sluka
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  3. Alexander K. Tagantsev
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  4. Nava Setter
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Contributions

T.S. conceived the project plan. A.C. and T.S. conceived and designed the experiments. A.C. grew the films and performed the PFM and C-AFM measurements. A.C. and T.S. carried out the temperature-dependent measurements. A.C., T.S. and A.K.T. analysed the data. N.S. initiated the study and was responsible for the overall direction. All authors contributed to the manuscript and interpretation of the data.

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Correspondence to Arnaud Crassous.

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Crassous, A., Sluka, T., Tagantsev, A. et al. Polarization charge as a reconfigurable quasi-dopant in ferroelectric thin films. Nature Nanotech 10, 614–618 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2015.114

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