Conductions through head-to-head and tail-to-tail domain walls in LiNbO3 nanodevices

Abstract

Conducting domain walls in an insulating ferroelectric matrix are interesting for the development of next generation multifunctional nanodevices with large output powers. However, electrical conductions are diversified among head-to-head (H-H), neutral (N), and tail-to-tail (T-T) domain walls (DWs) with disputable conduction mechanisms. It is generally accepted that the charged DWs are more electrically conductive than the neutral DWs. However, the charged walls are unstable due to high depolarization energies. Here, we stabilized the H-H DWs, NDWs and T-T DWs within a LiNbO3 transistor by controlling charge injection in compensation of the domain boundary charge under applied drain–gate, drain–source and gate–source voltages. The walls were created through the local 180° domain reversals in different inclined angles, and the transistors in different sizes were fabricated at the surfaces of 5 mol.% MgO-doped LiNbO3 single crystals in monodomain patterns. The NDWs are positively charged due to small inclination angles (~1°) and local sideways meandering behavior of the charged dipoles with electrical conduction that is three orders of magnitude higher than that across the T-T DWs but is one order of magnitude lower than that across the H-H DWs. Voltage dependences of wall currents can be fitted according to the space-charge-limited current equation with an exponential coefficient varying between 2.1 and 3.7 in some specific voltage ranges, implying discontinuous domain retraction in different inclined wall angles against the reduced applied voltage to affect the wall current. This finding provides the fundamental physics to improve domain wall conduction via domain reconstruction and broadens the domain wall application in future nano-devices.