Journal
ADVANCED ELECTRONIC MATERIALS
Volume 6, Issue 4, Pages -Publisher
WILEY
DOI: 10.1002/aelm.201901134
Keywords
ferroelectric switching; multiferroics; epsilon-Fe2O3
Funding
- Academy of Finland [293929, 304291, 319218, 316857]
- European Research Council [ERC-2012-StG 307502, ERC-2018-CoG 819623]
- Spanish Ministry of Economy, Competitiveness and Universities, through the Severo Ochoa Programme for Centres of Excellence in RD [SEV2015-0496]
- EU FEDER program
- Generalitat de Catalunya [2017SGR1377, 2017SGR765]
- Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) through DFG-ANR GALIMEO project [LE 2504/2-1]
- Julich Supercomputing Centre (JSC) [jiff38]
- JARA-HPC Partition [jara0081, jara0126]
- National Key Research Program of China [2017YFA0206200]
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [11874413]
- [MAT2017-85232-R]
- Academy of Finland (AKA) [293929, 319218, 304291, 319218, 304291, 293929] Funding Source: Academy of Finland (AKA)
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Deterministic polarization reversal in ferroelectric and multiferroic films is critical for their exploitation in nanoelectronic devices. While ferroelectricity has been studied for nearly a century, major discrepancies in the reported values of coercive fields and saturation polarization persist in literature for many materials. This raises questions about the atomic-scale mechanisms behind polarization reversal. Unconventional ferroelectric switching in epsilon-Fe2O3 films, a material that combines ferrimagnetism and ferroelectricity at room temperature, is reported. High-resolution in situ scanning transmission electron microscopy experiments and first-principles calculations demonstrate that polarization reversal in epsilon-Fe2O3 occurs around pre-existing domain walls only, triggering local domain wall motion in moderate electric fields of 250-500 kV cm(-1). Calculations indicate that the activation barrier for switching at domain walls is nearly a quarter of that corresponding to the most likely transition paths inside epsilon-Fe2O3 domains. Moreover, domain walls provide symmetry lowering of the polar structure near the domain boundary, which is shown to be necessary for ferroelectric switching in epsilon-Fe2O3. Local polarization reversal in epsilon-Fe2O3 limits the macroscopic ferroelectric response and offers important hints on how to tailor ferroelectric properties by domain structure design in other relevant ferroelectric materials.
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