Mesoscopic structure of mixed type domain walls in multiaxial ferroelectrics

Abstract

The structure of 180-degree uncharged rotational domain wall in a multiaxial ferroelectric film is studied within the framework of analytical Landau-Ginzburg-Devonshire (LGD) approach. The Finite Element Modelling (FEM) is used to solve numerically the system of the coupled nonlinear Euler-Lagrange (EL) differential equations of the second order for two components of polarization. We show that the structure of the domain wall and corresponding (meta)stable phase of the film are controlled by a single master parameter, dimensionless ferroelectric anisotropy {\mu}. We fitted the static profile of a solitary domain wall, calculated by FEM, with hyperbolic functions for polarization components, and extracted the five {\mu}-dependent parameters from the fitting to FEM curves. The high accuracy of the fitting results allows us to conclude that the analytical functions can be treated as the high-accuracy variational solution of the static EL equations with cubic nonlinearity. We further derive the two-component analytical solutions of the static EL equations for a polydomain 180-degree domain structure in a multiaxial ferroelectric film. The analysis of the free energy dependence on the film thickness and boundary conditions at its surfaces allows to select the domain states corresponding to the minimal energy. The single-domain state is ground for zero polarization derivative at the surfaces, while the poly-domain states minimize the system energy for zero polarization at the surfaces. Counterintuitively, the energy of the polydomain states split into two levels 0 and 1 for zero polarization at the surfaces, and each of the levels is the infinite set of the close-energy sub-levels, which morphology is characterized by different structure of the two-component polarization nodes.