title: Controlled Charging of Ferroelastic Domain Walls in Oxide Ferroelectrics.
abstract: Conductive domain walls (DWs) in ferroic oxides as device elements are a highly attractive research topic because of their robust and agile response to electric field. Charged DWs possessing metallic-type conductivity hold the highest promises in this aspect. However, their intricate creation, low stability, and interference with nonconductive DWs hinder their investigation and the progress toward future applications. Here, we find that conversion of the nominally neutral ferroelastic 90° DWs into partially charged DWs in Pb(Zr0.1Ti0.9)O3thin films enables easy and robust control over the DW conductivity. By employing transmission electron microscopy, conductive atomic force microscopy and phase-field simulation, our study reveals that charging of the ferroelastic DWs is controlled by mutually coupled DW bending, type of doping, polarization orientation and work-function of the adjacent electrodes. Particularly, the doping outweighs other parameters in controlling the DW conductivity. Understanding the interplay of these key parameters not only allows us to control and optimize conductivity of such ferroelastic DWs in the oxide ferroelectrics but also paves the way for utilization of DW-based nanoelectronic devices in the future.
authors.affiliation: Ceramics Laboratory, EPFL-Swiss Federal Institute of Technology , Lausanne 1015, Switzerland.|Peter Grünberg Institute and Ernst Ruska-Center for Microscopy and Spectroscopy with Electrons, Forschungszentrum Jülich , 52425 Jülich, Germany.
authors.forename: Xian-Kui
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4320-1120
authors.initials: XK
authors.lastname: Wei
authors.affiliation: Ceramics Laboratory, EPFL-Swiss Federal Institute of Technology , Lausanne 1015, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Tomas
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8092-2026
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Sluka
authors.affiliation: Ceramics Laboratory, EPFL-Swiss Federal Institute of Technology , Lausanne 1015, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Barbara
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Fraygola
authors.affiliation: Ceramics Laboratory, EPFL-Swiss Federal Institute of Technology , Lausanne 1015, Switzerland.|Institute for Photon Science and Synchrotron Radiation, KIT - Karlsruhe Institute of Technology , Hermann-von-Helmholtz-Platz 1, D-76344 Eggenstein-Leopoldshafen, Germany.
authors.forename: Ludwig
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Feigl
authors.affiliation: Peter Grünberg Institute and Ernst Ruska-Center for Microscopy and Spectroscopy with Electrons, Forschungszentrum Jülich , 52425 Jülich, Germany.|Central Facility for Electron Microscopy (GFE), RWTH Aachen University , Aachen 52074, Germany.
authors.forename: Hongchu
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4661-4644
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Du
authors.affiliation: Peter Grünberg Institute and Ernst Ruska-Center for Microscopy and Spectroscopy with Electrons, Forschungszentrum Jülich , 52425 Jülich, Germany.
authors.forename: Lei
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6924-2364
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Jin
authors.affiliation: Peter Grünberg Institute and Ernst Ruska-Center for Microscopy and Spectroscopy with Electrons, Forschungszentrum Jülich , 52425 Jülich, Germany.|The School of Electronic and Information Engineering, Xi'an Jiaotong University , Xi'an 710049, China.
authors.forename: Chun-Lin
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Jia
authors.affiliation: Ceramics Laboratory, EPFL-Swiss Federal Institute of Technology , Lausanne 1015, Switzerland.|Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Tel-Aviv University , Ramat Aviv 69978, Israel.
authors.forename: Nava
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Setter
keywords: PZT; domain wall conduction; doping; ferroelastic domain wall bending; tunable charging