Control of domain structure of epitaxial PbZr0.2Ti0.8O3 thin films grown on vicinal (001) SrTiO3 substrates
- 16 October 2001
- journal article
- research article
- Published by AIP Publishing in Applied Physics Letters
- Vol. 79 (17) , 2805-2807
- https://doi.org/10.1063/1.1402645
Abstract
We have investigated the polydomain formation in 100–200-nm-thick epitaxial thin films on vicinally cut (100) oriented substrates. Our results show that there is a preferential location of the nucleation of the a domains along the step edges of the underlying substrate. By piezo-response microscopy, we show that all a domains have their polarization aligned along the same direction. This result is in contrast to flat substrates where fourfold symmetry of a domains is observed. We observe that the critical thickness for a domain formation is much lower than that for films grown on flat substrates. We have developed a model based on minimization of elastic energy to describe the effect of localized stresses at step edges on the formation of a domains in the ferroelectric layer.
Keywords
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