title: Anomalous domain periodicity observed in ferroelectric PbTiO3 nanodots having 180° stripe domains.
abstract: Nanometer-scale ferroelectric dots and tubes have received a great deal of attention owing to their potential applications to nonvolatile memories and multi-functional devices. As for the size effect of 180° stripe domains in ferroelectric thin films, there have been numerous reports on the thickness-dependent domain periodicity. All these studies have revealed that the domain periodicity (w) of 180° stripe domains scales with the film thickness (d) according to the classical Landau-Lifshitz-Kittel (LLK) scaling law (w ∝ d(1/2)) down to the thickness of ~2 nm. In the case of PbTiO3 nanodots, however, we obtained a striking correlation that for the thickness less than a certain critical value, dc (~35 nm), the domain width even increases with decreasing thickness of the nanodot, which surprisingly indicates a negative value in the LLK scaling-law exponent. On the basis of theoretical considerations of dc, we attributed this anomalous domain periodicity to the finite lateral-size effect of a ferroelectric nanodot with an additional effect possibly coming from the existence of a thin non-ferroelectric surface layer.
authors.affiliation: Department of Applied Physics, College of Applied Science, Kyung Hee University, Suwon 446-701, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Jong Yeog
authors.initials: JY
authors.lastname: Son
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and Division of Advanced Materials Science, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Pohang 790-784, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Seungwoo
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Song
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, Berkeley, California 94720, USA.
authors.forename: Jung-Hoon
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Lee
authors.affiliation: Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and Division of Advanced Materials Science, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Pohang 790-784, Republic of Korea.
authors.forename: Hyun Myung
authors.initials: HM
authors.lastname: Jang