Abstract
Ferroelectric domain wall motion is fundamental to the switching properties of ferroelectric devices and is influenced by a wide range of factors including spatial disorder within the material and thermal noise. We build a Landau-Ginzburg-Devonshire (LGD) model of 180° ferroelectric domain wall motion that explicitly takes into account the presence of both spatial disorder and thermal noise. We demonstrate both creep flow and linear flow regimes of the domain wall dynamics by solving the LGD equations in a Galilean frame moving with the wall velocity v. Thermal noise plays a key role in the wall depinning process at small fields E. We study the scaling of the velocity v with the applied DC electric field E and show that noise and spatial disorder strongly affect domain wall velocities. We also show that domain walls develop a local, metastable paraelectric region and widen significantly in the presence of thermal noise in materials with "multiwell"potentials, representative of ferroelectrics at temperatures T just below a first-order phase transition (Curie) temperature Tc. These calculations point to the potential of noise and disorder to become control factors for the switching properties of ferroelectric materials, for example for advancement of microelectronic applications.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 124401 |
| Journal | Physical Review Materials |
| Volume | 6 |
| Issue number | 12 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Dec 2022 |
Funding
We thank Michael A. Susner for providing and materials. This research was supported in part by an appointment to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Technical and Professional Internship, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and administered by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education. P.M. and S.M.N. acknowledge support from the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, Materials Science and Engineering Division. N.B. acknowledges the support of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Technical and Professional Internship, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and administered by the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education. Piezoresponse force microscopy was conducted at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences (CNMS), which is a U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science User Facility at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The U.S. government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the U.S. government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for U.S. government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan .
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| U.S. Department of Energy | |
| Office of Science | |
| Basic Energy Sciences | |
| Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education | |
| Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering | DE-AC05-00OR22725 |