A long standing problem of domain switching process - how domains nucleate - is examined in ultrathin ferroelectric films. We demonstrate that the large depolarization fields in ultrathin films could significantly lower the nucleation energy barrier (U*) to a level comparable to thermal energy (kBT), resulting in power-law like polarization decay behaviors. The "Landauer's paradox": U* is thermally insurmountable is not a critical issue in the polarization switching of ultrathin ferroelectric films. We empirically find a universal relation between the polarization decay behavior and U*/kBT.
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0605079,
title = {Polarization Switching Dynamics Governed by Thermodynamic Nucleation Process in Ultrathin Ferroelectric Films},
author = {J. Y. Jo and D. J. Kim and Y. S. Kim and S. -B. Choe and T. K. Song and J. -G. Yoon and T. W. Noh},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0605079},
year = {2009}
}