In-plane charged antiphase boundary and 180° domain wall in a ferroelectric film

• Main Authors: Cai, Xiangbin, Chen, Chao, Xie, Lin, Wang, Changan, Gui, Zixin, Gao, Yuan, Kentsch, Ulrich, Zhou, Guofu, Gao, Xingsen, Chen, Yu, Zhou, Shengqiang, Gao, Weibo, Liu, Jun-Ming, Zhu, Ye, Chen, Deyang
• Other Authors: School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: 2024
• Subjects: Physics; In-plane charged antiphase boundary; Electron energy loss spectroscopy
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/173776
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The deterministic creation and modification of domain walls in ferroelectric films have attracted broad interest due to their unprecedented potential as the active element in non-volatile memory, logic computation and energy-harvesting technologies. However, the correlation between charged and antiphase states, and their hybridization into a single domain wall still remain elusive. Here we demonstrate the facile fabrication of antiphase boundaries in BiFeO3 thin films using a He-ion implantation process. Cross-sectional electron microscopy, spectroscopy and piezoresponse force measurement reveal the creation of a continuous in-plane charged antiphase boundaries around the implanted depth and a variety of atomic bonding configurations at the antiphase interface, showing the atomically sharp 180° polarization reversal across the boundary. Therefore, this work not only inspires a domain-wall fabrication strategy using He-ion implantation, which is compatible with the wafer-scale patterning, but also provides atomic-scale structural insights for its future utilization in domain-wall nanoelectronics.