Micro-/macro-responses of a ferroelectric single crystal with domain pinning and depinning by dislocations

Phase field simulations are conducted to investigate the micro-structural signature and the macro-response of a ferroelectric single crystal with domain pinning and depinning phenomena by dislocation arrays. It is shown that due to the presence of the dislocation arrays, a domain with polarizations antiparallel to an applied field can survive under the small amplitude of applied field. The residual domain serves as a pre-existing nucleus during the following macroscopic switching via only domain wall motion. The pinned domain will be depinned when the external electric field amplitude exceeds a critical value, which highly depends on the dislocation spacing in the dislocation array. Due to the pinning and depinning effect, an asymmetric hysteresis loop of polarization versus electric field might appear when a bias field is applied. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.