Oxygen vacancy is the most common type of point defects in functional oxides, and it is known to have profound influence on their properties. This is particularly true for ferroelectric oxides since their interaction with ferroelectric polarization often dictates the ferroelectric responses. Here, we study the influence of the concentration of oxygen vacancies on the stability of ferroelectric domain walls (DWs) in BiFeO3, a material with a relatively narrow bandgap among all perovskite oxides, which enables strong interactions among electronic charge carriers, oxygen vacancies, and ferroelectric domains. It is found that the electronic charge carriers in the absence of oxygen vacancies have essentially no influence on the spatial polarization distribution of the DWs due to their low concentrations. Upon increasing the concentration of oxygen vacancies, charge‐neutral DWs with an originally symmetric polarization distribution symmetric around the center of the wall can develop a strong asymmetry of the polarization field, which is mediated by the electrostatic interaction between polarization and electrons from the ionization of oxygen vacancies. Strongly charged head‐to‐head DWs that are unstable without oxygen vacancies can be energetically stabilized in the off‐stoichiometric BiFeO3−
Spontaneous electric polarization of solid ferroelectrics follows aligning directions of crystallographic axes. Domains of differently oriented polarization are separated by domain walls (DWs), which are predominantly flat and run along directions dictated by the bulk translational order and the sample surfaces. Here we explore DWs in a ferroelectric nematic (NF) liquid crystal, which is a fluid with polar long-range orientational order but no crystallographic axes nor facets. We demonstrate that DWs in the absence of bulk and surface aligning axes are shaped as conic sections. The conics bisect the angle between two neighboring polarization fields to avoid electric charges. The remarkable bisecting properties of conic sections, known for millennia, play a central role as intrinsic features of liquid ferroelectrics. The findings could be helpful in designing patterns of electric polarization and space charge.
more » « less- Award ID(s):
- 2122399
- PAR ID:
- 10396471
- Publisher / Repository:
- Nature Publishing Group
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Nature Communications
- Volume:
- 14
- Issue:
- 1
- ISSN:
- 2041-1723
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Abstract δ withδ ∼ 0.02 where ionization of oxygen vacancies provides sufficient free electrons to compensate the bound charge at the wall. Our results delineate the electrostatic coupling of the ionic defects and the associated free electronic charge carriers with the bound charge in the vicinity of neutral and charged DWs in perovskite ferroelectrics. -
Abstract Nanoelectronic devices based on ferroelectric domain walls (DWs), such as memories, transistors, and rectifiers, have been demonstrated in recent years. Practical high‐speed electronics, on the other hand, usually demand operation frequencies in the gigahertz (GHz) regime, where the effect of dipolar oscillation is important. Herein, an unexpected giant GHz conductivity on the order of 103S m−1is observed in certain BiFeO3DWs, which is about 100 000 times greater than the carrier‐induced direct current (dc) conductivity of the same walls. Surprisingly, the nominal configuration of the DWs precludes the alternating current (ac) conduction under an excitation electric field perpendicular to the surface. Theoretical analysis shows that the inclined DWs are stressed asymmetrically near the film surface, whereas the vertical walls in a control sample are not. The resultant imbalanced polarization profile can then couple to the out‐of‐plane microwave fields and induce power dissipation, which is confirmed by the phase‐field modeling. Since the contributions from mobile‐carrier conduction and bound‐charge oscillation to the ac conductivity are equivalent in a microwave circuit, the research on local structural dynamics may open a new avenue to implement DW nano‐devices for radio‐frequency applications.
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Elastic constants of splay K_11, twist K_22, and bend K_33 of nematic liquid crystals are often assumed to be equal to each other in order to simplify the theoretical description of complex director fields. Here we present examples of how the disparity of K_11 and K_33 produces effects that cannot be described in a one-constant approximation. In a lyotropic chromonic liquid crystal, nematic droplets coexisting with the isotropic phase change their shape from a simply-connected tactoid to a topologically distinct toroid as a result of temperature or concentration variation. The transformation is caused by the increase of the splay-to-bend ratio K_11/K_33. A phase transition from a conventional nematic to a twist-bend nematic implies that the ratio K_11/K_33 changes from very large to very small. As a result, the defects caused by an externally applied electric field change the deformation mode of optic axis from bend to splay. In the paraelectric-ferroelectric nematic transition, one finds an inverse situation: K_11/K_33 changes from small to large, which shapes the domain walls in the spontaneous electric polarization field as conic sections. The polarization field tends to be solenoidal, or divergence-free, a behavior complementary to irrotational curl-free director textures of a smectic A.more » « less
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