Nanoscale Non-Destructive Ferroelectric Characterization with Non-Contact Heterodyne Electrostrain Force Microscopy

TL;DR

This paper introduces NC-HEsFM, a novel non-contact, non-destructive ferroelectric characterization technique that overcomes limitations of PFM, enabling high-resolution domain mapping, hysteresis measurement, and domain control in various environments.

Contribution

The paper presents NC-HEsFM, a new heterodyne electrostrain force microscopy method that allows for high-resolution, non-contact ferroelectric analysis using quartz tuning fork sensors.

Findings

Achieves real non-contact ferroelectric characterization with negligible electrostatic effects.

Enables high-resolution ferroelectric domain mapping and hysteresis measurement.

Compatible with high-vacuum and low-temperature environments.

Abstract

Perceiving nanoscale ferroelectric phenomena from real space is of great importance for elucidating underlying ferroelectric physics. During the past decades, nanoscale ferroelectric characterization has mainly relied on the Piezoresponse Force Microscopy (PFM), however, the fundamental limitations of PFM have made the nanoscale ferroelectric studies encounter significant bottlenecks. In this study, a high-resolution non-contact ferroelectric measurement, named Non-Contact Heterodyne Electrostrain Force Microscopy (NC-HEsFM), has been introduced firstly. It has been unambiguously demonstrated that NC-HEsFM can operate on multiple eigenmodes to perform ideal high-resolution ferroelectric domain mapping, standard ferroelectric hysteresis loop measurement and controllable domain manipulation. With using quartz tuning fork (QTF) sensor and heterodyne detection, NC-HEsFM shows an unprecedented capability in achieving real non-contact yet non-destructive ferroelectric characterization with negligible electrostatic force effect. It is believed that NC-HEsFM can be extensively used in various ferroelectric or piezoelectric studies with providing substantially improved characterization performance. Meanwhile, the QTF-based force detection makes NC-HEsFM highly compatible for high-vacuum and low-temperature environments, providing ideal conditions for achieving an ultra-high spatial resolution to investigate the most intrinsic ferroelectric phenomena.