Distribution of Polarization in Thin Films with Incommensurate Ferroelectric Phase

Abstract

Ferroelectric thin films with the thickness corresponding to the order of period of spontaneous polarization vector variations in an incommensurate phase were considered. It was shown that fixing of spontaneous polarization vector on the surface of a ferroelectric layer leads to limiting the number of acceptable equilibrium states in the polarization variation in the sample with finite sizes and to the emergence of the transitions between the states. Temperature-dependent film thickness intervals with even or odd variation of spontaneous polarization vector were determined. It was demonstrated that the variation of ferroelectric film thickness and temperature provides practically important conditions for stabilizing symmetric or antisymmetric states with respect to polarization distribution in thin ferroelectric films with incommensurate phase.

Keywords:

• Ferroelectric film
• incommensurate phase
• spontaneous polarization
• phase transition

Additional information

Funding

This work has been supported by the Russian Science Foundation (project N 17-72-20105).