Recent progress in exotic polar topological states in ferroelectric nanostructures

Abstract

Exotic ferroelectric topological states (such as vortex state) have received intensive attention in the past decade, creating a new area for exploring the emerging physical phenomena and functionalities, as well as new applications (such as memory). In recent years, a series of discoveries in novel topological states, such as vortex, central domain, skyrmion and meron states, has inspired an upsurge of research interests. Moreover, the effort to manipulate such a topological domain structure hints the possibilities for the local, deterministic control of order parameters so that the static interface conductivity can be successfully controlled at topologically protected domain walls. These encouraging discoveries create a new avenue to the fertile emerging physic phenomena, and offer new possibilities for developing potential high-performance materials and new nano-electronic devices based on these exotic states. In the past decade, this field has developed rapidly and become a hot research topic in ferroelectrics. In this paper, we review the recent progress in the field of exotic topological state in nanoferroelectrics, and discuss some existing problems and potential directions.