Skip to main content
Article
Origin of Interfacial Polar Order in Incipient Ferroelectrics
Physical Review B - Condensed Matter and Materials Physics
  • Yijia Gu, Missouri University of Science and Technology
  • Nan Wang
  • Fei Xue
  • Long-Qing Chen
Abstract

There are ample experimental evidences indicating that the ferroelastic domain walls of incipient ferroelectrics, such as SrTiO3 and CaTiO3, are polar. The emergence of such interfacial polar order at a domain wall is exciting and believed to arise from the coupling between a primary order parameter, such as a strain or an antiferrodistortive (AFD) order parameter, and polarization. There have been several mechanisms proposed to explain the emergence of interfacial polar order, including biquadratic coupling, AFD-antiferroelectric coupling, and flexoelectric coupling. Using CaTiO3 as an example, we demonstrate, using both asymptotic analytics and numerical calculation, that the flexoelectric coupling is likely the dominant mechanism leading to the interfacial polar order.

Department(s)
Materials Science and Engineering
Comments
This paper was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) through Grants No. DMR-1410714, No. DMR-1210588, and No. DMR 1234096.
Keywords and Phrases
  • Ferroelectric materials,
  • Ferroelectricity,
  • Ferroelectric tunnel
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Final Version
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2015 American Physical Society (APS), All rights reserved.
Publication Date
5-1-2015
Publication Date
01 May 2015
Citation Information
Yijia Gu, Nan Wang, Fei Xue and Long-Qing Chen. "Origin of Interfacial Polar Order in Incipient Ferroelectrics" Physical Review B - Condensed Matter and Materials Physics Vol. 91 Iss. 17 (2015) ISSN: 1098-0121; 1550-235X
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/yijia-gu/65/