Abstract
Nonlinear materials have found wide applications in electronic devices. Of special importance and interest are those with varistor-type grain boundaries and those displaying large piezoelectric and electrostrictive responses to external fields. To access the local properties of these materials, we have designed two new contact mode scanning probe techniques. The first technique referred to as nanoimpedance microscopy/spectroscopy, which incorporates impedance spectroscopy with a conducting AFM tip as an electrode, has been demonstrated on measuring local grain boundary properties of a ZnO varistor, as well as the contact quality between AFM tip and a ferroelectric sample. The other technique referred to as second harmonic piezoresponse force microscopy developed to measure the electrosctriction has been demonstrated on ferroelectric polymer thin film. A theoretical model has been presented to describe the contrast formation of the second harmonic as well as the first harmonic (piezoresponse) images and to explain the observed hysteretic field dependence of the second harmonic amplitude signal.
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