abstract
Monitoring the charged defect concentration at the nanoscale is of critical importance for both the fundamental science and applications of ferroelectrics. However, up-to-date, high-resolution study methods for the investigation of structural defects, such as transmission electron microscopy, X-ray tomography, etc., are expensive and demand complicated sample preparation. With an example of the lanthanum-doped bismuth ferrite ceramics, a novel method is proposed based on the switching spectroscopy piezoresponse force microscopy (SSPFM) that allows probing the electric potential from buried subsurface charged defects in the ferroelectric materials with a nanometer-scale spatial resolution. When compared with the composition-sensitive methods, such as neutron diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and local time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry, the SSPFM sensitivity to the variation of the electric potential from the charged defects is shown to be equivalent to less than 0.3 at% of the defect concentration. Additionally, the possibility to locally evaluate dynamics of the polarization screening caused by the charged defects is demonstrated, which is of significant interest for further understanding defect-mediated processes in ferroelectrics.
keywords
ELECTRICAL-CONDUCTIVITY; BIFEO3 CERAMICS; DOMAIN; PHASE; POLARIZATION; TRANSITIONS; PRINCIPLE; CRYSTALS; STRAIN
subject category
Chemistry; Science & Technology - Other Topics; Materials Science
authors
Alikin, D; Abramov, A; Turygin, A; Ievlev, A; Pryakhina, V; Karpinsky, D; Hu, QY; Jin, L; Shur, V; Tselev, A; Kholkin, A
our authors
Alexander Tselev
Principal Researcher
Andrei Kholkin
Principal Researcher
Denis Alikin
Junior Researcher
Dzmitry Karpinski (Karpinsky)
Post-doc Fellowshipacknowledgements
The reported study was funded by the Russian Science Foundation (grant 19-72-10076). The equipment of the Ural Center for Shared Use Modern nanotechnology Ural Federal University (Reg.. 2968) was used. ToF-SIMS characterization was conducted at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, which is a DOE Office of Science User Facility, and using instrumentation within ORNL's Materials Characterization Core provided by UT-Battelle, LLC under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy. PFM and XPS data analysis were performed in part by A.Ts. and was supported by the project CICECOAveiro Institute of Materials, UIDB/50011/2020 & UIDP/50011/2020, financed by national funds through the FCT/MEC and when appropriate co-financed by FEDER under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement.