Domain wall conduction in multiaxial ferroelectrics

TL;DR

This paper investigates how domain wall structures in multiaxial ferroelectric-semiconductors influence conductance, revealing that nanoscale domains can be highly conductive throughout their cross-section, which is promising for nanoelectronic applications.

Contribution

The study combines LGD theory with charge distribution modeling to analyze conductance in complex domain structures, including effects of size, tilt, curvature, and flexoelectric coupling, revealing nanoscale domains as conductive channels.

Findings

Small nanodomains (<10 correlation length) are conductive across their entire cross-section.

Conductance sharply increases at domain walls in larger domains, but is uniform in nanoscale domains.

Implications for nanoelectronics due to conductive nanosized channels.

Abstract

The conductance of domain wall structures consisting of either stripes or cylindrical domains in multi-axial ferroelectric-semiconductors is analyzed. The effects of the domain size, wall tilt and curvature, on charge accumulation, are analyzed using the Landau-Ginsburg Devonshire (LGD) theory for polarization combined with Poisson equation for charge distributions. Both the classical ferroelectric parameters including expansion coefficients in 2-4-6 Landau potential and gradient terms, as well as flexoelectric coupling, inhomogeneous elastic strains and electrostriction are included in the present analysis. Spatial distributions of the ionized donors, free electrons and holes were found self-consistently using the effective mass approximation for the respective densities of states. The proximity and size effect of the electron and donor accumulation/depletion by thin stripe domains and cylindrical nanodomains are revealed. In contrast to thick domain stripes and thicker cylindrical domains, in which the carrier accumulation (and so the static conductivity) sharply increases at the domain walls only, small nanodomains of radius less then 5-10 correlation length appeared conducting across entire cross-section. Implications of such conductive nanosized channels may be promising for nanoelectronics.