Abstract
We determined simultaneously the domain wall speed (v) and the nucleation rate (N) of ferroelectric (FE) domain in 100-nm-thick epitaxial PbZr{sub 0.2}Ti{sub 0.8}O{sub 3} capacitors from the successive domain evolution images under various applied electric field (E{sub app}) by piezoresponse force microscopy. It was found that, at a given electric field, the v and N values decreased as the switching process proceeded. The averaged domain wall speed was confirmed to follow the Merz's law, exp[-(E{sub 0}/E{sub app})], with an activation field E{sub 0} of about 700 kV/cm. Moreover, we found that the nucleation process played a more important role in the FE domain switching at higher fields, while domain wall motion mainly contributed to the switching at lower fields.
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