Configurable Crack Wall Conduction in a Complex Oxide.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 36595450.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1021/acs.nanolett.2c02640.
- No licence information is recorded for this record.
- Because redistribution is not established, this page shows the abstract only. Follow the links below for the full text.
Abstract
Mobile defects in solid-state materials play a significant role in memristive switching and energy-efficient neuromorphic computation. Techniques for confining and manipulating point defects may have great promise for low-dimensional memories. Here, we report the spontaneous gathering of oxygen vacancies at strain-relaxed crack walls in SrTiO<sub>3</sub> thin films grown on DyScO<sub>3</sub> substrates as a result of flexoelectricity. We found that electronic conductance at the crack walls was enhanced compared to the crack-free region, by a factor of 10<sup>4</sup>. A switchable asymmetric diode-like feature was also observed, and the mechanism is discussed, based on the electrical migration of oxygen vacancy donors in the background of Sr-deficient acceptors forming n<sup><i>+</i></sup>-n or n<i>-</i>n<sup><i>+</i></sup> junctions. By tracing the temporal relaxations of surface potential and lattice expansion of a formed region, we determine the diffusivity of mobile defects in crack walls to be 1.4 × 10<sup>-16</sup> cm<sup>2</sup>/s, which is consistent with oxygen vacancy kinetics.