Limitations for the determination of piezoelectric constants with piezoresponse force microscopy

TL;DR

This paper critically examines the limitations of using piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM) for accurately determining piezoelectric constants, highlighting calibration challenges and the need for extensive effort to overcome these issues.

Contribution

It provides a reliable calibration procedure for PFM and analyzes the fundamental difficulties in accurately measuring piezoelectric constants with this technique.

Findings

Calibration issues significantly affect measurement accuracy.

Without extensive effort, difficulties in PFM measurements cannot be easily circumvented.

Proper calibration is essential for reliable PFM-based piezoelectric constant determination.

Abstract

At first sight piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM) seems an ideal technique for the determination of piezoelectric coefficients (PCs), thus making use of its ultra-high vertical resolution (<0.1 pm/V). Christman et al. \cite{Chr98} first used PFM for this purpose. Their measurements, however, yielded only reasonable results of unsatisfactory accuracy, amongst others caused by an incorrect calibration of the setup. In this contribution a reliable calibration procedure is given followed by a careful analysis of the encounted difficulties determining PCs with PFM. We point out different approaches for their solution and expose why, without an extensive effort, those difficulties can not be circumvented.