Abstract
Here, we report the observation of ferroelectric and ferroelastic nanodomains in (110)-oriented BiFeO3 (BFO) thin films epitaxially grown on low symmetric (100) NdGaO3 (NGO) substrate. We observed long range ordering of ferroelectric 109° stripe nanodomains separated by periodic vertical domain walls in as-grown 130 nm thick BFO films. The effect of La0.67Sr0.33CoO3 (LSCO) conducting interlayer on domain configurations in BFO/NGO film was also observed with relatively short range-ordering of stripe domains due to the modified electrostatic boundary conditions in BFO/LSCO/NGO film. Additional studies on B-site doping of Nb ions in BFO films showed change in the domain structures due to doping induced change in lattice anisotropy while maintaining the stripe domain morphology with 109° domain wall. This long-range array of ferroelectric and ferroelastic domains can be useful for optoelectronic devices and ferroelastic templates for strain coupled artificial magnetoelectric heterostructures.
Highlights
We report the observation of ferroelectric and ferroelastic nanodomains in (110)-oriented BiFeO3 (BFO) thin films epitaxially grown on low symmetric (100) NdGaO3 (NGO) substrate
Based on the piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM) images, stripe domain pattern and domain wall orientation were directly interpreted by the periodic change in phase contrast across domain walls while neglecting the corresponding amplitude contrasts, where amplitude response could be important for analyzing the domain variants more accurately
We report on the ferroelectric and ferroelastic nanodomains formation in 130 nm thick (110) BiFeO3 (BFO) thin films epitaxially grown on low symmetric GdFeO3-type (100) NdGaO3 (NGO) substrate
Summary
We found that Nb-doping creates stripe domains and changes the domain and domain wall orientations Analysis of both OP (Fig. 6b,d) and IP (Fig. 6c,e) PFM phase and amplitude images of BFNO/NGO film reveals that the most of the film (scan area) possesses uniform OP phase contrast. In case of Nb-doped BFO (BFNO) thin films, we think that doping affects the lattice mismatch between BFO and NGO, which, in turn, alters the effect of in-plane anisotropy imposed by the substrate Such a doping induced change in anisotropy could be the main reason behind homogeneous long-range stripe morphology and domain pattern in BFNO thin films. This long-range array of ferroelectric and ferroelastic domains can be useful for optoelectronic devices and ferroelastic templates for strain coupled artificial magnetoelectric heterostructures, which may find their applications in generation hard disk drives[20,31]
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