Formation of Broad Domain Boundary in Congruent Lithium Niobate Modified by Proton Exchange

Abstract

The strong dependence of the domain kinetics on the applied field and the thickness of the surface layers produced by proton exchange has been revealed in congruent lithium niobate. The correlated nucleation leads to formation of self-assembled structures consisting of isolated domains. Formation of the nanodomains in front of the domain wall results in its continuous motion. The pronounced self-organization effect leads to formation of broad domain boundaries and ensembles of isolated nanodomains consisting of nanodomain chains and nets. The obtained effects were attributed to highly non-equilibrium switching conditions caused by retardation of the bulk screening of depolarization field.

Keywords:

• Nanodomain structure
• self-assembling
• self-organized structures
• domain kinetics

Acknowledgments

The equipment of the Ural Center for Shared Use “Modern nanotechnology” UrFU was used for PFM and CRM measurements.

Funding

The research was made possible in part by the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation (contract No. 14.594.21.0011); RFBR and the Government of Sverdlovsk region (grant 13-02-96041-r-Ural-a); by RFBR (grants 13-02-01391-a, 14-02-01160-a and 14-02-90447 Ukr-a) and by the financial support for young scientists provided by the UrFU development program and the French program for joint supervision of PhD thesis.