Polydomain ferroelectricity in very thin films [D.J. Kim et al., Phys.Rev.Lett. 95, 237602 (2005)]

TL;DR

This paper discusses experimental findings on very thin ferroelectric BaTiO3 films, revealing multi-domain states, polarization switching behavior, and negative susceptibility, challenging existing electrostatic interpretations.

Contribution

It provides the first direct observation of negative susceptibility and highlights discrepancies between electrostatic theory and experimental results in ultrathin ferroelectric films.

Findings

Presence of substantial Merz's activation field

First direct observation of negative susceptibility

Disagreement with electrostatic screening interpretation

Abstract

T.W. Noh and his group (Kim et al.: PRL, 2005) have recently published a seminal experimental study of very thin ferroelectric (FE) BaTiO3 capacitors. They found an evidence that all their samples, including the thinnest one (d=5 nm), are multi-domain (MD). Under a high enough external field, the MD state goes over into polarization saturated state, perhaps a single domain (SD) one, which relaxes back due to domain wall motion if the external field E_0 is reduced below a certain value E_0=E_{0r}. Kim et al. have approximately identified this field as a depolarizing field due to incomplete screening by electrodes and claimed that it coincides with the one estimated from electrostatics. We found that such an interpretation does not apply and there is actually a very instructive disagreement between the theory and experiment. The data indicates (i) a presence of substantial Merz's activation field, (ii) first direct observation of negative susceptibility of multidomain films that we predicted some while ago.