Abstract
Atomic movement under application of external stimuli (i.e., electric field or mechanical stress) in oxide materials has not been observed due to a lack of experimental methods but has been well known to determine the electric polarization. Here, we investigated atomic movement arising from the ferroelectric response of BiFeO3 thin films under the effect of an electric field and stress in real time using a combination of switching spectroscopy, time-resolved X-ray microdiffraction, and in situ stress engineering. Under an electric field applied to a BiFeO3 film, the hysteresis loop of the reflected X-ray intensity was found to result from the opposing directions of displaced atoms between the up and down polarization states. An additional shift of atoms arising from the linearly increased dielectric component of the polarization in BiFeO3 was confirmed through gradual reduction of the diffracted X-ray intensity. The electric-field-induced displacement of oxygen atoms was found to be larger than that of Fe atom for both ferroelectric switching and increase of the polarization. The effect of external stress on the BiFeO3 thin film, which was controlled by applying an electric field to the highly piezoelectric substrate, showed smaller atomic shifts than for the case of applying an electric field to the film, despite the similar tetragonality.
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Acknowledgements
J. Y. J. acknowledges the support through grants from the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Korean government (Nos. NRF-2014R1A1A3053111, NRF-016R1D1A1A02937051, and NRF-2017K1A3A7A09016388), the GRI (GIST Research Institute) project by GIST, the TJ Park Science Fellowship of the POSCO TJ Park Foundation, MSIO & PAL, Korea, and Creative Materials Discovery Program through the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science and ICT (No. 2017M3D1A1040828). H. J. L. acknowledges support by the NRF (No. 2017R1A6A3A11030959). E. J. G. and K. D. acknowledge support by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) under the grant SFB 762 Functionality of Oxide Interfaces. In addition, E. J. G. is supported by the Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) Program of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, managed by UT-Battelle, LLC, for the U.S. DOE.
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Lee, H.J., Guo, EJ., Min, T. et al. In situ observation of atomic movement in a ferroelectric film under an external electric field and stress. Nano Res. 11, 3824–3832 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-017-1956-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12274-017-1956-x