Anisotropic conductance at improper ferroelectric domain walls.
Nat Mater
; 11(4): 284-8, 2012 Feb 26.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-22367003
ABSTRACT
Transition metal oxides hold great potential for the development of new device paradigms because of the field-tunable functionalities driven by their strong electronic correlations, combined with their earth abundance and environmental friendliness. Recently, the interfaces between transition-metal oxides have revealed striking phenomena, such as insulator-metal transitions, magnetism, magnetoresistance and superconductivity. Such oxide interfaces are usually produced by sophisticated layer-by-layer growth techniques, which can yield high-quality, epitaxial interfaces with almost monolayer control of atomic positions. The resulting interfaces, however, are fixed in space by the arrangement of the atoms. Here we demonstrate a route to overcoming this geometric limitation. We show that the electrical conductance at the interfacial ferroelectric domain walls in hexagonal ErMnO(3) is a continuous function of the domain wall orientation, with a range of an order of magnitude. We explain the observed behaviour using first-principles density functional and phenomenological theories, and relate it to the unexpected stability of head-to-head and tail-to-tail domain walls in ErMnO(3) and related hexagonal manganites. As the domain wall orientation in ferroelectrics is tunable using modest external electric fields, our finding opens a degree of freedom that is not accessible to spatially fixed interfaces.
Texto completo:
1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Tipo de estudo:
Qualitative_research
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Nat Mater
Assunto da revista:
CIENCIA
/
QUIMICA
Ano de publicação:
2012
Tipo de documento:
Article
País de publicação:
ENGLAND
/
ESCOCIA
/
GB
/
GREAT BRITAIN
/
INGLATERRA
/
REINO UNIDO
/
SCOTLAND
/
UK
/
UNITED KINGDOM