In-plane charged antiphase boundary and 180° domain wall in a ferroelectric film.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 38071396.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-023-44091-4 and PMC identifier 10710403.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The deterministic creation and modification of domain walls in ferroelectric films have attracted broad interest due to their unprecedented potential as the active element in non-volatile memory, logic computation and energy-harvesting technologies. However, the correlation between charged and antiphase states, and their hybridization into a single domain wall still remain elusive. Here we demonstrate the facile fabrication of antiphase boundaries in BiFeO<sub>3</sub> thin films using a He-ion implantation process. Cross-sectional electron microscopy, spectroscopy and piezoresponse force measurement reveal the creation of a continuous in-plane charged antiphase boundaries around the implanted depth and a variety of atomic bonding configurations at the antiphase interface, showing the atomically sharp 180° polarization reversal across the boundary. Therefore, this work not only inspires a domain-wall fabrication strategy using He-ion implantation, which is compatible with the wafer-scale patterning, but also provides atomic-scale structural insights for its future utilization in domain-wall nanoelectronics.