Anisotropic Ferroelectricity in Polar Vortices

Piush Behera; Aiden M Ross; Nirmaan Shanker; Peter Meisenheimer; Mahir Manna; Ching-Che Lin; Shang-Lin Hsu; Isaac Harris; Pravin Kavle; Sajid Husain; Shashank K Ojha; Sujit Das; Archana Raja; Lane W Martin; Sandhya Susarla; Sayeef Salahuddin; Long-Qing Chen; Ramamoorthy Ramesh

doi:10.1002/adma.202410149

Anisotropic Ferroelectricity in Polar Vortices

Adv Mater. 2024 Nov 7:e2410149. doi: 10.1002/adma.202410149. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Piush Behera¹, Aiden M Ross², Nirmaan Shanker³, Peter Meisenheimer¹, Mahir Manna⁴, Ching-Che Lin^{5

6}, Shang-Lin Hsu^{1

3}, Isaac Harris^{6

7}, Pravin Kavle^{1

6}, Sajid Husain^{1

6}, Shashank K Ojha⁸, Sujit Das⁹, Archana Raja¹⁰, Lane W Martin^{1

6

11}, Sandhya Susarla¹², Sayeef Salahuddin³, Long-Qing Chen², Ramamoorthy Ramesh^{1

6

7

13}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
² Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA.
³ Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
⁴ Department of Physics, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 85287, USA.
⁵ Applied Science and Technology Graduate Group, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
⁶ Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
⁷ Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
⁸ Rice Advanced Materials Institute, Rice University, Houston, TX, 77005, USA.
⁹ Materials Research Centre, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, 560012, India.
¹⁰ Molecular Foundry, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
¹¹ Departments of Materials Science and NanoEngineering, Chemistry, and Physics and Astronomy and the Rice Advanced Materials Insitute, Rice University, Houston, TX, 77005, USA.
¹² School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy, State University, Tempe, AZ, 85287, USA.
¹³ Departments of Materials Science and NanoEngineering and Physics and Astronomy and the Rice Advanced Materials Institute, Rice University, Houston, TX, 77005, USA.

PMID: 39511884
DOI: 10.1002/adma.202410149

Abstract

The exotic polarization configurations of topologically protected dipolar textures have opened new avenues for realizing novel phenomena absent in traditional ferroelectric systems. While multiple recent studies have revealed a diverse array of emergent properties in such polar topologies, the details of their atomic and mesoscale structures remain incomplete. Through atomic- and meso-scale imaging techniques, the emergence of a macroscopic ferroelectric polarization along both principal axes of the vortex lattice while performing phase-field modeling to probe the atomic scale origins of these distinct polarization components is demonstrated. Additionally, due to the anisotropic epitaxial strain, the polarization switching behavior perpendicular and parallel to the vortices is highly anisotropic, with switching along the vortex axes occurring over numerous decades in field-pulse width. This slow switching process allows for the deterministic control of the polarization state, enabling a non-volatile, multi-state memory with excellent distinguishability and long retention times.

Keywords: domain structure; ferroelectric; vortices.

Abstract

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