title: Strong anisotropy of ferroelectricity in lead-free bismuth silicate.
abstract: Bismuth silicate (Bi2SiO5) was recently suggested as a potential silicate based lead-free ferroelectric material. Here, we show the existence of ferroelectricity and explore the strong anisotropy of local ferroelectricity using piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM). Domain structures are reconstructed using angle-resolved PFM. Furthermore, piezoresponse hysteresis loops and piezoelectric coefficients are spatially investigated at the nanoscale. The obtained results confirm the existence of ferroelectricity with strong c-axis polarization. These results could provide basic information on the anisotropic ferroelectricity in Bi2SiO5 and furthermore suggest its considerable potential for lead-free ferroelectric applications with silicon technologies.
authors.affiliation: School of Advanced Materials Science and Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU), Suwon 440-746, Republic of Korea. yunseokkim@skku.edu.
authors.forename: Daehee
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Seol
authors.forename: Hiroki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Taniguchi
authors.forename: Jae-Yeol
authors.initials: JY
authors.lastname: Hwang
authors.forename: Mitsuru
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Itoh
authors.forename: Hyunjung
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Shin
authors.forename: Sung Wng
authors.initials: SW
authors.lastname: Kim
authors.forename: Yunseok
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Kim