title: Microwave a.c. conductivity of domain walls in ferroelectric thin films.
abstract: Ferroelectric domain walls are of great interest as elementary building blocks for future electronic devices due to their intrinsic few-nanometre width, multifunctional properties and field-controlled topology. To realize the electronic functions, domain walls are required to be electrically conducting and addressable non-destructively. However, these properties have been elusive because conducting walls have to be electrically charged, which makes them unstable and uncommon in ferroelectric materials. Here we reveal that spontaneous and recorded domain walls in thin films of lead zirconate and bismuth ferrite exhibit large conductance at microwave frequencies despite being insulating at d.c. We explain this effect by morphological roughening of the walls and local charges induced by disorder with the overall charge neutrality. a.c. conduction is immune to large contact resistance enabling completely non-destructive walls read-out. This demonstrates a technological potential for harnessing a.c. conduction for oxide electronics and other materials with poor d.c. conduction, particularly at the nanoscale.
authors.affiliation: Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, USA.
authors.forename: Alexander
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-0098-6696
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Tselev
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory for Low-Dimensional Quantum Physics, Department of Physics and Collaborative Innovation Center for Quantum Matter, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.|RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science (CEMS), Wako, Saitama 351-0198, Japan.
authors.forename: Pu
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Yu
authors.affiliation: Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, USA.
authors.forename: Ye
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Cao
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
authors.forename: Liv R
authors.initials: LR
authors.lastname: Dedon
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Science and Engineering and Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.|Materials Science Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
authors.forename: Lane W
authors.initials: LW
authors.lastname: Martin
authors.affiliation: Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, USA.
authors.forename: Sergei V
authors.identifier: 0000-0001-5354-6152
authors.initials: SV
authors.lastname: Kalinin
authors.affiliation: Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, USA.
authors.forename: Petro
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Maksymovych