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Multivariate Statistical Characterization of Charged and Uncharged Domain Walls in Multiferroic Hexagonal YMnO₃ Single Crystal Visualized by a Spherical Aberration-Corrected STEM

Nano Letters2013Vol. 13(10), pp. 4594–4601

Citations Over TimeTop 15% of 2013 papers

Takao Matsumoto, Ryo Ishikawa, Tetsuya Tohei, Hideo Kimura, Qiwen Yao, Hongyang Zhao, Xiaolin Wang, Dapeng Chen, Zhenxiang Cheng, Naoya Shibata, Yuichi Ikuhara

Abstract

A state-of-the-art spherical aberration-corrected STEM was fully utilized to directly visualize the multiferroic domain structure in a hexagonal YMnO3 single crystal at atomic scale. With the aid of multivariate statistical analysis (MSA), we obtained unbiased and quantitative maps of ferroelectric domain structures with atomic resolution. Such a statistical image analysis of the transition region between opposite polarizations has confirmed atomically sharp transitions of ferroelectric polarization both in antiparallel (uncharged) and tail-to-tail 180° (charged) domain boundaries. Through the analysis, a correlated subatomic image shift of Mn-O layers with that of Y layers, exhibiting a double-arc shape of reversed curvatures, have been elucidated. The amount of image shift in Mn-O layers along the c-axis is statistically significant as small as 0.016 nm, roughly one-third of the evident image shift of 0.048 nm in Y layers. Interestingly, a careful analysis has shown that such a subatomic image shift in Mn-O layers vanishes at the tail-to-tail 180° domain boundaries. Furthermore, taking advantage of the annular bright field (ABF) imaging technique combined with MSA, the tilting of MnO5 bipyramids, the very core mechanism of multiferroicity of the material, is evaluated.

Citations Over TimeTop 15% of 2013 papers

Abstract

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