Athermal domain-wall creep near a ferroelectric quantum critical point
Ferroelectric domain walls are typically stationary because of the presence of a pinning potential. Nevertheless, thermally activated, irreversible creep motion can occur under a moderate electric field, thereby underlying rewritable and non-volatile memory applications. Conversely, as the temperatu...
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Nature Publishing Group
2016
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| Online Access: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4757756/ |
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pubmed-47577562016-03-04 Athermal domain-wall creep near a ferroelectric quantum critical point Kagawa, Fumitaka Minami, Nao Horiuchi, Sachio Tokura, Yoshinori Article Ferroelectric domain walls are typically stationary because of the presence of a pinning potential. Nevertheless, thermally activated, irreversible creep motion can occur under a moderate electric field, thereby underlying rewritable and non-volatile memory applications. Conversely, as the temperature decreases, the occurrence of creep motion becomes less likely and eventually impossible under realistic electric-field magnitudes. Here we show that such frozen ferroelectric domain walls recover their mobility under the influence of quantum fluctuations. Nonlinear permittivity and polarization-retention measurements of an organic charge-transfer complex reveal that ferroelectric domain-wall creep occurs via an athermal process when the system is tuned close to a pressure-driven ferroelectric quantum critical point. Despite the heavy masses of material building blocks such as molecules, the estimated effective mass of the domain wall is comparable to the proton mass, indicating the realization of a ferroelectric domain wall with a quantum-particle nature near the quantum critical point. Nature Publishing Group 2016-02-16 /pmc/articles/PMC4757756/ /pubmed/26880041 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms10675 Text en Copyright © 2016, Nature Publishing Group, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited. All Rights Reserved. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ |
| repository_type |
Open Access Journal |
| institution_category |
Foreign Institution |
| institution |
US National Center for Biotechnology Information |
| building |
NCBI PubMed |
| collection |
Online Access |
| language |
English |
| format |
Online |
| author |
Kagawa, Fumitaka Minami, Nao Horiuchi, Sachio Tokura, Yoshinori |
| spellingShingle |
Kagawa, Fumitaka Minami, Nao Horiuchi, Sachio Tokura, Yoshinori Athermal domain-wall creep near a ferroelectric quantum critical point |
| author_facet |
Kagawa, Fumitaka Minami, Nao Horiuchi, Sachio Tokura, Yoshinori |
| author_sort |
Kagawa, Fumitaka |
| title |
Athermal domain-wall creep near a ferroelectric quantum critical point |
| title_short |
Athermal domain-wall creep near a ferroelectric quantum critical point |
| title_full |
Athermal domain-wall creep near a ferroelectric quantum critical point |
| title_fullStr |
Athermal domain-wall creep near a ferroelectric quantum critical point |
| title_full_unstemmed |
Athermal domain-wall creep near a ferroelectric quantum critical point |
| title_sort |
athermal domain-wall creep near a ferroelectric quantum critical point |
| description |
Ferroelectric domain walls are typically stationary because of the presence of a pinning potential. Nevertheless, thermally activated, irreversible creep motion can occur under a moderate electric field, thereby underlying rewritable and non-volatile memory applications. Conversely, as the temperature decreases, the occurrence of creep motion becomes less likely and eventually impossible under realistic electric-field magnitudes. Here we show that such frozen ferroelectric domain walls recover their mobility under the influence of quantum fluctuations. Nonlinear permittivity and polarization-retention measurements of an organic charge-transfer complex reveal that ferroelectric domain-wall creep occurs via an athermal process when the system is tuned close to a pressure-driven ferroelectric quantum critical point. Despite the heavy masses of material building blocks such as molecules, the estimated effective mass of the domain wall is comparable to the proton mass, indicating the realization of a ferroelectric domain wall with a quantum-particle nature near the quantum critical point. |
| publisher |
Nature Publishing Group |
| publishDate |
2016 |
| url |
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4757756/ |
| _version_ |
1613540102434193408 |