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Sandvik OW, Müller AM, Ånes HW, Zahn M, He J, Fiebig M, Lottermoser T, Rojac T, Meier D, Schultheiß J. Pressure Control of Nonferroelastic Ferroelectric Domains in ErMnO 3. Nano Lett 2023; 23:6994-7000. [PMID: 37470766 PMCID: PMC10416345 DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.3c01638] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/03/2023] [Revised: 06/27/2023] [Indexed: 07/21/2023]
Abstract
Mechanical pressure controls the structural, electric, and magnetic order in solid-state systems, allowing tailoring of their physical properties. A well-established example is ferroelastic ferroelectrics, where the coupling between pressure and the primary symmetry-breaking order parameter enables hysteretic switching of the strain state and ferroelectric domain engineering. Here, we study the pressure-driven response in a nonferroelastic ferroelectric, ErMnO3, where the classical stress-strain coupling is absent and the domain formation is governed by creation-annihilation processes of topological defects. By annealing ErMnO3 polycrystals under variable pressures in the MPa regime, we transform nonferroelastic vortex-like domains into stripe-like domains. The width of the stripe-like domains is determined by the applied pressure as we confirm by three-dimensional phase field simulations, showing that pressure leads to oriented layer-like periodic domains. Our work demonstrates the possibility to utilize mechanical pressure for domain engineering in nonferroelastic ferroelectrics, providing a lever to control their dielectric and piezoelectric responses.
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Affiliation(s)
- Olav W. Sandvik
- Department
of Materials Science and Engineering, Norwegian
University of Science and Technology (NTNU), 7034 Trondheim, Norway
| | | | - Håkon W. Ånes
- Department
of Materials Science and Engineering, Norwegian
University of Science and Technology (NTNU), 7034 Trondheim, Norway
| | - Manuel Zahn
- Department
of Materials Science and Engineering, Norwegian
University of Science and Technology (NTNU), 7034 Trondheim, Norway
- Experimental
Physics V, University of Augsburg, 86159 Augsburg, Germany
| | - Jiali He
- Department
of Materials Science and Engineering, Norwegian
University of Science and Technology (NTNU), 7034 Trondheim, Norway
| | - Manfred Fiebig
- Department
of Materials, ETH Zurich, 8093 Zurich, Switzerland
| | | | - Tadej Rojac
- Electronic
Ceramics Department, Jožef Stefan
Institute, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
| | - Dennis Meier
- Department
of Materials Science and Engineering, Norwegian
University of Science and Technology (NTNU), 7034 Trondheim, Norway
| | - Jan Schultheiß
- Department
of Materials Science and Engineering, Norwegian
University of Science and Technology (NTNU), 7034 Trondheim, Norway
- Experimental
Physics V, University of Augsburg, 86159 Augsburg, Germany
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Schultheiß J, Xue F, Roede E, Ånes HW, Danmo FH, Selbach SM, Chen LQ, Meier D. Confinement-Driven Inverse Domain Scaling in Polycrystalline ErMnO 3. Adv Mater 2022; 34:e2203449. [PMID: 36084267 DOI: 10.1002/adma.202203449] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [What about the content of this article? (0)] [Affiliation(s)] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/16/2022] [Revised: 08/17/2022] [Indexed: 06/15/2023]
Abstract
The research on topological phenomena in ferroelectric materials has revolutionized the way people understand polar order. Intriguing examples are polar skyrmions, vortex/anti-vortex structures, and ferroelectric incommensurabilties, which promote emergent physical properties ranging from electric-field-controllable chirality to negative capacitance effects. Here, the impact of topologically protected vortices on the domain formation in improper ferroelectric ErMnO3 polycrystals is studied, demonstrating inverted domain scaling behavior compared to classical ferroelectrics. It is observed that as the grain size increases, smaller domains are formed. Phase field simulations reveal that elastic strain fields drive the annihilation of vortex/anti-vortex pairs within the grains and individual vortices at the grain boundaries. The inversion of the domain scaling behavior has far-reaching implications, providing fundamentally new opportunities for topology-based domain engineering and the tuning of the electromechanical and dielectric performance of ferroelectrics in general.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jan Schultheiß
- Department of Materials Science and Engineering, NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Høgskoleringen 1, Trondheim, 7034, Norway
| | - Fei Xue
- Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA
| | - Erik Roede
- Department of Materials Science and Engineering, NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Høgskoleringen 1, Trondheim, 7034, Norway
| | - Håkon W Ånes
- Department of Materials Science and Engineering, NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Høgskoleringen 1, Trondheim, 7034, Norway
| | - Frida H Danmo
- Department of Materials Science and Engineering, NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Høgskoleringen 1, Trondheim, 7034, Norway
| | - Sverre M Selbach
- Department of Materials Science and Engineering, NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Høgskoleringen 1, Trondheim, 7034, Norway
| | - Long-Qing Chen
- Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA
| | - Dennis Meier
- Department of Materials Science and Engineering, NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Høgskoleringen 1, Trondheim, 7034, Norway
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