Lamellar ferroelectric domains in PbTiO 3 grains imaged and manipulated by AFM

Abstract

Atomic force microscopy in combination with piezoresponse force microscopy are applied to inspect and manipulate the lamellar ferroelectric domains of a non-continuous polycrystalline PbTiO 3 film. A former study showed such films to exhibit a net integral polarization direction with every grain being randomly oriented. However, the results presented here demonstrate a lamellar domain structure inside most of these single crystalline grains which is attributable to 90° domain walls. This lamellar domain distribution might be a result of mechanical strain at the surface and the interface to the substrate as predicted from theoretical calculations for epitaxially grown PbTiO 3 films. In a switching experiment, the domains of a single grain were manipulated, showing that the lamellar structure recovers. This indicates that the lamellar domain arrangement is energetically favored in these samples.