Related papers: Polarization-dependent conductivity of grain bound…
Polar discontinuities and structural changes at oxide interfaces can give rise to a large variety of electronic and ionic phenomena. Related effects have been intensively studied in epitaxial systems, including ferroelectric domain walls…
A common strategy for reducing thermal conductivity of polycrystalline systems is to increase the number of grain boundaries. Indeed, grain boundaries enhance the probability of phonon scattering events, which has been applied to control…
Among the recent discoveries of domain wall functionalities, the observation of electrical conduction at ferroelectric domain walls in the multiferroic insulator BiFeO3 has opened exciting new possibilities. Here, we report evidence of…
Interface effects on the ferroelectric behavior of PbTiO$_3$ ultrathin films deposited on SrTiO$_3$ substrate are investigated using an interatomic potential approach with parameters fitted to first-principles calculations. We find that the…
Electronic conduction along individual domain walls (DWs) has been reported in BiFeO$_3$ (BFO) and other nominally insulating ferroelectrics. DWs in these materials separate regions of differently oriented electrical polarization (domains)…
The balance between interfacial chemistry, electrostatics, and epitaxial strain plays a crucial role in stabilizing polarization in ferroelectric thin films. Here, we bring these contributions into competition in BiFeO$_3$ (BFO) thin films…
We study electron transport in granular film placed above the ferroelectric substrate. We show that the conductivity of granular film strongly depends on the ferroelectric state due to screening effects which modify the Coulomb blockade in…
There is growing evidence that domain walls in ferroics can possess emergent properties that are absent in bulk materials. For example, 180 domain walls in the ferroelectric-antiferromagnetic BiFeO3 are particularly interesting because they…
The presence of domains in ferroic materials can negatively affect their macroscopic properties and hence their usefulness in device applications. From an experimental perspective, measuring materials comprising multiple domains can…
Strain engineering of perovskite oxide thin films has proven to be an extremely powerful method for enhancing and inducing ferroelectric behavior. In ferroelectric thin films and superlattices, the polarization is intricately linked to…
Deterministic polarization reversal in ferroelectric and multiferroic films is critical for their exploitation in nanoelectronic devices. While ferroelectricity has been studied for nearly a century, major discrepancies in the reported…
Domain walls in ferroelectrics exhibit a plethora of phases and functionalities not found in the bulk. The interplay of electrostatic, chemical, topological, and distortive inhomogeneities at the walls can be so complex, however, that this…
Although enhanced conductivity at ferroelectric domain boundaries has been found in BiFeO$_3$ films, Pb(Zr,Ti)O$_3$ films, and hexagonal rare-earth manganite single crystals, the mechanism of the domain wall conductivity is still under…
Natural interfaces in ferroic oxides have developed into versatile playgrounds for studying electronic correlation effects in 2D systems. The microscopic origin of the emergent local electronic properties is often debated, however, as…
We report first-principle atomistic simulations on the effect of local strain gradients on the nanoscale domain morphology of free-standing PbTiO$_3$ ultrathin films. First, the ferroelectric properties of free films at the atomic level are…
Though the electrical responses of the various polymorphs found in ferroelectric polycrystalline thin film HfO$_2$ are now well characterized, little is currently understood of this novel material's grain sub-structure. In particular, the…
Ferroelectric materials exhibit a switchable, spontaneous polarization at the unit cell level--an attractive property utilized in many emerging technologies including, among others, high-density memory storage, low-power transistors, and…
Using the self-consistent Landau-Ginzburg-Devonshire approach we simulate and analyze the spontaneous formation of the domain structure in thin ferroelectric films covered with the surface screening charge of the specific nature…
Thin films of PbTiO3, a classical ferroelectric, have been grown under tensile strain on single-crystal substrates of DyScO3. The films, of only 5nm thickness, grow fully coherent with the substrate and show no crystallographic twin…
The instability of ferroelectric ordering in ultra-thin films is one of the most important fundamental issues pertaining realization of a number of electronic devices with enhanced functionality, such as ferroelectric and multiferroic…