Mechanical and Electrical Control of Charged Domain Walls in Ferroelectric Materials

Charged domain walls (CDWs) in ferroelectrics, as a result of “head-to-head” or “tail-to-tail” polarization configurations, are of significant scientific and technological importance, as they have been shown to play a critical role in affecting the atomic structures and controlling the electric, photoelectric and piezoelectric properties of ferroelectric materials. An understanding of the local response and underlying dynamic mechanism of CDWs under external excitations is necessary to engineer reliable ferroelectric devices. In this work, we present the nanoscale behavior of individual CDWs under applied mechanical stress and electric fields in a BiFeO3 thin film using in situ transmission electron microscopy (TEM).