Abstract
Two Planar Pt electrodes with an inter-electrode distance of about 100 nm were fabricated at the surface of BiFeO3 thin films, which allow the manipulation of ferroelectric domain switching at nanoscale. This electrode configuration was pursued to study conductive domain-wall influence on the photovoltaic current in BiFeO3 thin films. Modulations of short-circuit photovoltaic current and hysteretic conductive switching behaviors were found in the above nanodevices, accompanied by the generation of the conductive domain walls connecting two gapped electrodes. Our technique provides a new method to configure ferroelectric domains, where the influence of the conductive domain walls on the photovoltaic effect is preeminent.
Highlights
The photovoltaic (PV) effect in ferroelectrics has attracted great attention in recent years because of the intriguing physics underpinning this phenomenon and its potential applications in sensors, nonvolatile memories, and solar cells [1,2,3,4,5]
We fabricated planar Pt electrodes with an inter-electrode distance of about 100 nm at the surface of BFO thin films, which allow the manipulation of conductive 71◦ domain walls (DWs) by applying various pre-poling voltages
From the PV measurements, we found that the Isc is extremely sensitive to the pre-poling voltage
Summary
The photovoltaic (PV) effect in ferroelectrics has attracted great attention in recent years because of the intriguing physics underpinning this phenomenon and its potential applications in sensors, nonvolatile memories, and solar cells [1,2,3,4,5]. Lead-free BiFeO3 (BFO) is a promising candidate for the study of the PV effect, due to its relatively narrow band gap of 2.6–2.8 eV [6,7,8,9]. Two different geometrical configurations of capacitor electrodes were used to study the nucleating and switching dynamics of domains and domain walls (DWs) on the PV effect. The stressing differences near the top and bottom electrode layers caused by lattice mismatching between the film and substrate, as well as the uneven distribution of oxygen vacancies near the two electrodes in the formation of interfacial passive layers are believably significant, making the clear determination of various PV effects elusive [10,11]
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