Imaging Mechanism of Piezoresponse Force Microscopy in Capacitor Structures.pdfVIP

To be submitted to Appl. Phys. Lett. Imaging Mechanism of Piezoresponse Force Microscopy in Capacitor Structures Sergei V. Kalinin* and Brian J. Rodriguez?, Materials Science and Technology Division and the Center for Nanophase Materials Science, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN 37831 Seung-Hyun Kim INOSTEK Inc., Gyeonggi 426-901, Korea S-K. Hong Hynix Semiconductor, Inc., San 136-1, Ami-ri, Bubal-eub, Icheon-si, Kyoungki-do 467-701, Korea Alexei Gruverman Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Lincoln, NE 68588-0111 Eugene A. Eliseev? Institute for Problems of Materials Science, National Academy of Science of Ukraine, 3, Krjijanovskogo, 03142 Kiev, Ukraine * Corresponding author, sergei2@ ? Current Address, Max Planck Institute for Microstructural Physics, Weinberg 2, Halle\Saale, Germany 06120 ? Corresponding author, eliseev@.ua 1 The image formation mechanism in Piezoresponse Force Microscopy (PFM) of capacitor structures is analyzed. We demonstrate that the spatial resolution is a bilinear function of film and top electrode thicknesses, and derive the corresponding analytical expressions. For many perovskites, the opposite contributions of d31 and d33 components can result in anomalous domain wall profiles. This analysis establishes the applicability limits of PFM for polarization dynamics studies in capacitors, and applies to other structural probes, including focused X-ray studies of capacitor structures. 2 Applications of ferroelectric materials as non-volatile memory components1,2 has resulted in significant interest in theoretical and experimental studies of polarization dynamics in capacitor structures. Numerous theoretical studies of polarization behavior, depolarization field and dead-layer effects, and periodic domain-structure stabilities using Ginzburg-Landau and atomistic theories are available.3,4,5 Experimentally, sp