Long-range symmetry breaking in embedded ferroelectrics
Source abstract
Abstract
The characteristic functionality of ferroelectric materials is due to the symmetry of their crystalline structure. As such, ferroelectrics lend themselves to design approaches that manipulate this structural symmetry by introducing extrinsic strain. Using in situ dark-field X-ray microscopy to map lattice distortions around deeply embedded domain walls and grain boundaries in BaTiO3, we reveal that symmetry-breaking strain fields extend up to several micrometres from domain walls. As this exceeds the average domain width, no part of the material is elastically relaxed, and symmetry is universally broken. Such extrinsic strains are pivotal in defining the local properties and self-organization of embedded domain walls, and must be accounted for by emerging computational approaches to material design.
Source: europepmc · Quality: candidate unverified · Source record ↗
Research context
OpenAlex topics: Ferroelectric and Piezoelectric Materials · Electronic and Structural Properties of Oxides · Multiferroics and related materials
SciVX discovery tags are terminology-based. OpenAlex topics are source-provided classifications.
References (43)
Show source-provided references
1. Freedman, D. A., Roundy, D. & Arias, T. A. Elastic effects of vacancies in strontium titanate: Short- and long-range strain fields, elastic dipole tensors, and chemical strain. Phys. Rev. B 80, 064108 (2009).10.1103/PhysRevB.80.064108 ↗
2. Chu, M.-W. et al. Impact of misfit dislocations on the polarization instability of epitaxial nanostructured ferroelectric perovskites. Nat. Mater. 3, 87–90 (2004).10.1038/nmat1057 ↗
3. Hÿtch, M. J., Snoeck, E. & Kilaas, R. Quantitative measurement of displacement and strain fields from HREM micrographs. Ultramicroscopy 74, 131–146 (1998).10.1016/S0304-3991(98)00035-7 ↗
4. Choudhury, S., Li, Y. L., Krill, C. III & Chen, L.-Q. Effect of grain orientation and grain size on ferroelectric domain switching and evolution: Phase field simulations. Acta Mater. 55, 1415–1426 (2007).10.1016/j.actamat.2006.09.048 ↗
5. Schlom, D. G. et al. Strain tuning of ferroelectric thin films. Annu. Rev. Mater. Res. 37, 589–626 (2007).10.1146/annurev.matsci.37.061206.113016 ↗
6. Budimir, M., Damjanovic, D. & Setter, N. Enhancement of the piezoelectric response of tetragonal perovskite single crystals by uniaxial stress applied along the polar axis: A free-energy approach. Phys. Rev. B 72, 064107 (2005).10.1103/PhysRevB.72.064107 ↗
7. Noheda, B. et al. Polarization rotation via a monoclinic phase in the piezoelectric 92%PbZn1/3Nb2/3O3-8%PbTiO3. Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 3891–3894 (2001).10.1103/PhysRevLett.86.3891 ↗
8. Tagantsev, A. K. Piezoelectricity and flexoelectricity in crystalline dielectrics. Phys. Rev. B 34, 5883–5889 (1986).10.1103/PhysRevB.34.5883 ↗
9. Chu, K. et al. Enhancement of the anisotropic photocurrent in ferroelectric oxides by strain gradients. Nat. Nanotech. 10, 972–979 (2015).10.1038/nnano.2015.191 ↗
10. Goncalves-Ferreira, L., Redfern, S. A. T., Artacho, E., Salje, E. & Lee, W. T. Trapping of oxygen vacancies in the twin walls of perovskite. Phys. Rev. B 81, 024109 (2010).10.1103/PhysRevB.81.024109 ↗
11. Chen, C.-C. et al. Three-dimensional imaging of dislocations in a nanoparticle at atomic resolution. Nature 496, 74–77 (2013).10.1038/nature12009 ↗
12. Kalinin, S. V. & Bonnel, D. A. Imaging mechanism of piezoresponse force microscopy of ferroelectric surfaces. Phys. Rev. B 65, 125408 (2002).10.1103/PhysRevB.65.125408 ↗
13. Farooq, M. U. et al. Using EBSD and TEM-Kikuchi patterns to study local crystallography at the domain boundaries of lead zirconate titanate. J. Microsc. 320, 445–454 (2008).10.1111/j.1365-2818.2008.02004.x ↗
14. Tagantsev, A. K., Cross, L. E. & Fousek, J. Domains in Ferroic Crystals and Thin Films (Spinger, NewYork, NY, 2010).10.1007/978-1-4419-1417-0 ↗
15. Uchino, K. Ferroelectric Devices (CRC Press, Boca Raton, FL, 2009).
16. Hruszkewycz, S. O. et al. Imaging local polarization in ferroelectric thin films by coherent X-ray Bragg projection ptychography. Phys. Rev. Lett. 110, 177601 (2013).10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.177601 ↗
17. Lummen, T. T. A. et al. Thermotropic phase boundaries in classic ferroelectrics. Nat. Commun. 5, 3172 (2014).10.1038/ncomms4172 ↗
18. Rogan, R. C., Tamura, N., Swift, G. A. & Üstündag, E. Direct measurement of triaxial strain fields around ferroelectric domains using X-ray microdiffraction. Nat. Mater. 2, 379–381 (2003).10.1038/nmat901 ↗
19. Simons, H. et al. Dark-field X-ray microscopy for multiscale structural characterization. Nat. Commun. 6, 6098 (2015).10.1038/ncomms7098 ↗
20. Cayron, C. Quantification of multiple twinning in face centred cubic materials. Acta Mater. 559, 252–262 (2011).10.1016/j.actamat.2010.09.029 ↗
21. Catalan, G. et al. Flexoelectric rotation of polarization in ferroelectric thin films. Nat. Mater. 10, 963–967 (2011).10.1038/nmat3141 ↗
22. Locherer, K. R., Chrosch, J. & Salje, E. K. H. Diffuse X-ray scattering in WO3. Phase Transit. 67, 51–63 (1998).10.1080/01411599808219188 ↗
23. Simons, H., Jakobsen, A. C., Ahl, S. R., Detlefs, C. & Poulsen, H. F. Multiscale 3D characterization with dark-field X-ray microscopy. MRS Bull. 41, 454–459 (2016).10.1557/mrs.2016.114 ↗
24. Arlt, G. The influence of microstructure on the properties of ferroelectric ceramics. Ferroelectrics 104, 217–227 (1990).10.1080/00150199008223825 ↗
25. Salje, E. K. H., Li, S., Stengel, M., Gumpsch, P. & Ding, X. Flexoelectricity and the polarity of complex ferroelastic twin patterns. Phys. Rev. B 94, 024114 (2016).10.1103/PhysRevB.94.024114 ↗
26. Ahluwalia, R. et al. Manipulating ferroelectric domains in nanostructures under electron beams. Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 165702 (2013).10.1103/PhysRevLett.111.165702 ↗
27. Novak, J., Bismayer, U. & Salje, E. K. H. Simulated equilibrium shapes of ferroelastic needle domains. J. Phys. Condens. Matter 14, 657 (2002).10.1088/0953-8984/14/3/332 ↗
28. Harrison, R. J. & Salje, E. K. H. Ferroic switching, avalanches, and the Larkin length: Needle domains in LaAlO3. Appl. Phys. Lett. 99, 151915 (2011).10.1063/1.3650475 ↗
29. Cheng, C. E. et al. Revealing the flexoelectricity in the mixed-phase regions of epitaxial BiFeO3 thin films. Sci. Rep. 5, 8091 (2005).10.1038/srep08091 ↗
30. Zhang, R., Jiang, B. & Cao, W. Orientation dependence of piezoelectric properties of single domain 0.67(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-0.33PbTiO3 crystals. Appl. Phys. Lett. 82, 3737–3739 (2003).10.1063/1.1576510 ↗
31. Kwei, G. H., Lawson, A. C., Billinge, S. J. L. & Cheong, S. W. Structures of the ferroelectric phases of barium titanate. J. Phys. Chem. 97, 2368–2377 (1993).10.1021/j100112a043 ↗
32. Daniels, J. E. et al. Heterogeneous grain-scale response in ferroic polycrystals under electric field. Sci. Rep. 6, 22820 (2016).10.1038/srep22820 ↗
33. Marincel, D. M. et al. Influence of a single grain boundary on domain wall motion in ferroelectrics. Adv. Funct. Mater. 24, 1409–1417 (2014).10.1002/adfm.201302457 ↗
34. Bintachitt, P., Trolier-McKinstry, S., Seal, K., Jesse, S. & Kalinin, S. V. Switching spectroscopy piezoresponse force microscopy of polycrystalline capacitor structures. Appl. Phys. Lett. 94, 042906 (2009).10.1063/1.3070543 ↗
35. Rojac, T. et al. Domain-wall conduction in ferroelectric BiFeO3 controlled by accumulation of charged defects. Nat. Mater. 16, 322–327 (2017).10.1038/nmat4799 ↗
36. Aschauer, U., Pfenniger, R., Selbach, S. M., Grande, T. & Spaldin, N. Strain-controlled oxygen vacancy formation and ordering in CaMnO3. Phys. Rev. B 88, 054111 (2013).10.1103/PhysRevB.88.054111 ↗
37. Daniel, L., Hall, D. A. & Withers, P. J. A multiscale model for reversible ferroelectric behavior of polycrystalline ceramics. J. Mech. Mater. 71, 85–100 (2014).10.1016/j.mechmat.2014.01.006 ↗
38. Horstmeyer, M.F. Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME) for Metals: Using Multiscale Modeling to Invigorate Engineering Design with Science (Wiley, Hoboken, NJ, 2012)10.1002/9781118342664 ↗
39. Eriksson, M., van der Veen, J. F. & Quitmann, C. Diffraction-limited storage rings. J., Synchrotron Radiat. 21, 837–842 (2014).10.1107/S1600577514019286 ↗
40. Vaughn, G. B. M. et al. X-ray transfocators: focusing devices based on compound refractive lenses. J. Synchrotron Rad. 18, 125–133 (2011).10.1107/S0909049510044365 ↗
41. Stöhr, F. et al. Sacrificial structures for deep reactive ion etching of high-aspect ratio kinoform silicon x-ray lenses. J. Vac. Sci. Technol. B 33, 062001 (2015).10.1116/1.4931622 ↗
42. Poulsen, H. F. et al. X-ray diffraction microscopy based on refractive optics. J. Appl. Cryst. 50, 1441–1456 (2017).10.1107/S1600576717011037 ↗
43. Maranganti, R. & Sharma, P. Atomistic determination of flexoelectric properties of crystalline dielectrics. Phys. Rev. B. 80, 054109 (2009).10.1103/PhysRevB.80.054109 ↗