Proton-induced achiral structural transition at 180° domain wall in ferroelectrics

Abstract

The influence of proton radiation on the achiral structural transition at 180° domain walls in tetragonal ferroelectric BaTiO₃ is theoretically studied in this work. The proton-induced oxygen vacancy in ferroelectrics is predicted using the Monte Carlo Simulations, which increases with the increase of the proton fluence and the energy of the incident proton. A model based on the LGD is developed to investigate the influence of oxygen vacancy which is considered as a defect dipole on the achiral structural transition of Bloch–Néel type of domain wall. Under the proton radiation, the Bloch-type of domain wall shows the character of asymmetric because of the coupling of the polarization and the electric field, while the proton radiation just changes the magnitude of the polarization in the Néel-type of domain wall.

KEYWORDS:

• Achiral structural transition
• proton
• ferroelectric domain
• oxygen defect

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Opening Project of Key Laboratory of Wide Band-gap Semiconductor Materials, Science and Technology on Reliability Physics and Application Technology of Electronic Component Laboratory, State Key Laboratory of Intense Pulsed Radiation Simulation and Effect (No. SKLIPR1816), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 61704127), and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2019M663178).

Notes on contributors

Bo Li

Bo Li received the Ph. D. degree in materials of science and technology from the Xiangtan University in 2013. He is an Associated Professor. His research interests include the radiation effect of materials and devices and macro- and nano characterization of ferroelectric, dielectric, electrocaloric properties.

Zhi Feng Lei

Zhi Feng Lei received the Ph. D. degree in materials of science and technology from the Xiangtan University in 2018. He is work in Science and Technology on Reliability Physics and Application Technology of Electronic Component Laboratory. His research interests include the radiation effect of materials and devices.

Jing Huang

Jing Huang is currently working toward the B.S. degree with the Key Laboratory of Low-Dimensional Materials and Application Technology, Xiangtan University, Xiangtan, China. His current research interest is theoretic research of ferroelectrics.

Hong Xia Guo

Hong Xia Guo received the Ph. D. degree in microelectronics and solid-state electronics from the Xidian University in 2002. She is a Professor of Xiangtan University and her research interests include the simulation test technology for radiation effects of microelectronic devices in space radiation environment.