Controlled manipulation of oxygen vacancies using nanoscale flexoelectricity

Saikat Das (), Bo Wang, Ye Cao, Myung Rae Cho, Yeong Jae Shin, Sang Mo Yang, Lingfei Wang, Minu Kim, Sergei V. Kalinin, Long-Qing Chen and Tae Won Noh ()
Additional contact information
Saikat Das: Institute for Basic Science (IBS)
Bo Wang: The Pennsylvania State University
Ye Cao: Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Myung Rae Cho: Institute for Basic Science (IBS)
Yeong Jae Shin: Institute for Basic Science (IBS)
Sang Mo Yang: Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Lingfei Wang: Institute for Basic Science (IBS)
Minu Kim: Institute for Basic Science (IBS)
Sergei V. Kalinin: Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Long-Qing Chen: The Pennsylvania State University
Tae Won Noh: Institute for Basic Science (IBS)

Nature Communications, 2017, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Oxygen vacancies, especially their distribution, are directly coupled to the electromagnetic properties of oxides and related emergent functionalities that have implications for device applications. Here using a homoepitaxial strontium titanate thin film, we demonstrate a controlled manipulation of the oxygen vacancy distribution using the mechanical force from a scanning probe microscope tip. By combining Kelvin probe force microscopy imaging and phase-field simulations, we show that oxygen vacancies can move under a stress-gradient-induced depolarisation field. When tailored, this nanoscale flexoelectric effect enables a controlled spatial modulation. In motion, the scanning probe tip thereby deterministically reconfigures the spatial distribution of vacancies. The ability to locally manipulate oxygen vacancies on-demand provides a tool for the exploration of mesoscale quantum phenomena and engineering multifunctional oxide devices.

Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-017-00710-5 Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:8:y:2017:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-017-00710-5

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-017-00710-5

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().