Ghara S, Geirhos K, Kuerten L, Lunkenheimer P, Tsurkan V, Fiebig M, Kézsmárki I
Experimental Physics V, Center for Electronic Correlations and Magnetism, University of Augsburg, Augsburg, Germany.
Department of Materials, ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland.
Nat Commun. 2021 Jun 25;12(1):3975. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-24160-2.
Atomically sharp domain walls in ferroelectrics are considered as an ideal platform to realize easy-to-reconfigure nanoelectronic building blocks, created, manipulated and erased by external fields. However, conductive domain walls have been exclusively observed in oxides, where domain wall mobility and conductivity is largely influenced by stoichiometry and defects. Here, we report on giant conductivity of domain walls in the non-oxide ferroelectric GaVS. We observe conductive domain walls forming in zig-zagging structures, that are composed of head-to-head and tail-to-tail domain wall segments alternating on the nanoscale. Remarkably, both types of segments possess high conductivity, unimaginable in oxide ferroelectrics. These effectively 2D domain walls, dominating the 3D conductance, can be mobilized by magnetic fields, triggering abrupt conductance changes as large as eight orders of magnitude. These unique properties demonstrate that non-oxide ferroelectrics can be the source of novel phenomena beyond the realm of oxide electronics.
铁电体中原子级尖锐的畴壁被认为是实现易于重新配置的纳米电子构建块的理想平台,这些构建块可由外部场创建、操纵和擦除。然而,导电畴壁仅在氧化物中被观察到,其中畴壁迁移率和电导率在很大程度上受化学计量和缺陷的影响。在此,我们报道了非氧化物铁电体GaVS中畴壁的巨导电性。我们观察到导电畴壁形成锯齿状结构,该结构由纳米级交替的头对头和尾对尾畴壁段组成。值得注意的是,这两种类型的段都具有高电导率,这在氧化物铁电体中是不可想象的。这些有效地主导三维电导的二维畴壁可被磁场移动,引发高达八个数量级的突然电导变化。这些独特的性质表明,非氧化物铁电体可以成为超越氧化物电子学领域的新现象的来源。