Although ferroelectric materials are characterised by their parallel arrangement of electric dipoles, in the right boundary conditions these dipoles can reorganize themselves into vortices, antivortices and other non-trivial topological structures. By contrast, little is known about how (or whether) antiferroelectrics, which are materials showing an antiparallel arrangement of electric dipoles, can exhibit vortices or antivortices. In this study, using advanced aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy, we uncover the existence of atomic-scale (anti)vorticity in ferroelastic domain walls of the archetypal antiferroelectric phase of PbZrO3. The finding is supported, and its underlying physics is explained, using both second-principles simulations based on a deep-learning interatomic potential, and continuum field modelling. This discovery expands the field of chiral topologies into antiferroelectrics.
@article{arxiv.2502.05852,
title = {Vortices and antivortices in antiferroelectric PbZrO3},
author = {Ying Liu and Huazhang Zhang and Konstantin Shapovalov and Ranming Niu and Julie M. Cairney and Xiaozhou Liao and Krystian Roleder and Andrzej Majchrowski and Jordi Arbiol and Philippe Ghosez and Gustau Catalan},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.05852},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
10 pages/4 figures main paper, 31 pages total including supplementary information