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Avalanche criticality during ferroelectric/ferroelastic switching

Field induced domain wall displacements define ferroelectric/ferroelastic hysteresis loops, which are at the core of piezoelectric, magnetoelectric and memristive devices. These collective displacements are scale invariant jumps with avalanche characteristics. Here, we analyse the spatial distributi...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Casals, Blai, Nataf, Guillaume F., Salje, Ekhard K. H.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7804440/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33436615
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20477-6
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author Casals, Blai
Nataf, Guillaume F.
Salje, Ekhard K. H.
author_facet Casals, Blai
Nataf, Guillaume F.
Salje, Ekhard K. H.
author_sort Casals, Blai
collection PubMed
description Field induced domain wall displacements define ferroelectric/ferroelastic hysteresis loops, which are at the core of piezoelectric, magnetoelectric and memristive devices. These collective displacements are scale invariant jumps with avalanche characteristics. Here, we analyse the spatial distribution of avalanches in ferroelectrics with different domain and transformation patterns: Pb(Mg(1/3)Nb(2/3))O(3)–PbTiO(3) contains complex domains with needles and junction patterns, while BaTiO(3) has parallel straight domains. Nevertheless, their avalanche characteristics are indistinguishable. The energies, areas and perimeters of the switched regions are power law distributed with exponents close to predicted mean field values. At the coercive field, the area exponent decreases, while the fractal dimension increases. This fine structure of the switching process has not been detected before and suggests that switching occurs via criticality at the coercive field with fundamentally different switching geometries at and near this critical point. We conjecture that the domain switching process in ferroelectrics is universal at the coercive field.
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spelling pubmed-78044402021-01-21 Avalanche criticality during ferroelectric/ferroelastic switching Casals, Blai Nataf, Guillaume F. Salje, Ekhard K. H. Nat Commun Article Field induced domain wall displacements define ferroelectric/ferroelastic hysteresis loops, which are at the core of piezoelectric, magnetoelectric and memristive devices. These collective displacements are scale invariant jumps with avalanche characteristics. Here, we analyse the spatial distribution of avalanches in ferroelectrics with different domain and transformation patterns: Pb(Mg(1/3)Nb(2/3))O(3)–PbTiO(3) contains complex domains with needles and junction patterns, while BaTiO(3) has parallel straight domains. Nevertheless, their avalanche characteristics are indistinguishable. The energies, areas and perimeters of the switched regions are power law distributed with exponents close to predicted mean field values. At the coercive field, the area exponent decreases, while the fractal dimension increases. This fine structure of the switching process has not been detected before and suggests that switching occurs via criticality at the coercive field with fundamentally different switching geometries at and near this critical point. We conjecture that the domain switching process in ferroelectrics is universal at the coercive field. Nature Publishing Group UK 2021-01-12 /pmc/articles/PMC7804440/ /pubmed/33436615 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20477-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Casals, Blai
Nataf, Guillaume F.
Salje, Ekhard K. H.
Avalanche criticality during ferroelectric/ferroelastic switching
title Avalanche criticality during ferroelectric/ferroelastic switching
title_full Avalanche criticality during ferroelectric/ferroelastic switching
title_fullStr Avalanche criticality during ferroelectric/ferroelastic switching
title_full_unstemmed Avalanche criticality during ferroelectric/ferroelastic switching
title_short Avalanche criticality during ferroelectric/ferroelastic switching
title_sort avalanche criticality during ferroelectric/ferroelastic switching
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7804440/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33436615
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-020-20477-6
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