Abstract
Polar textures have attracted substantial attention in recent years as a promising analog to spin-based textures in ferromagnets. Here, using optical second-harmonic generation–based circular dichroism, we demonstrate deterministic and reversible control of chirality over mesoscale regions in ferroelectric vortices using an applied electric field. The microscopic origins of the chirality, the pathway during the switching, and the mechanism for electric field control are described theoretically via phase-field modeling and second-principles simulations, and experimentally by examination of the microscopic response of the vortices under an applied field. The emergence of chirality from the combination of nonchiral materials and subsequent control of the handedness with an electric field has far-reaching implications for new electronics based on chirality as a field-controllable order parameter.
Highlights
Of all the fundamental physical phenomena enabled by broken symmetry [magnetism through broken time reversal symmetry, piezoelectricity through broken spatial inversion symmetry, and the combination of these two through a toroidal order [1, 2]], chirality is perhaps the most exotic and yet pervasive
Chirality is a basic feature that determines many important properties in nature, from the strength of the weak interactions according to the electroweak theory to its essential role in the spontaneous symmetry breaking in subatomic particle physics or biophysics [3, 4]
The vortex state dominates because of the interplay between depolarization energy at the PTO/STO interfaces, elastic energy from the tensile strain imposed by the DSO substrate, and gradient energy in the ferroelectric [13, 20]
Summary
Of all the fundamental physical phenomena enabled by broken symmetry [magnetism through broken time reversal symmetry, piezoelectricity through broken spatial inversion symmetry, and the combination of these two through a toroidal order [1, 2]], chirality is perhaps the most exotic and yet pervasive. A second source of chirality can be observed when the vortices are offset along the [110]o direction, normal to the vortex axis (Fig. 1D).
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