Lamellar ferroelectric domains in PbTiO3 grains imaged and manipulated by AFM

Atomic force microscopy in combination with piezoresponse force microscopy are applied to inspect and manipulate the lamellar ferroelectric domains of a non-continuous polycrystalline PbTiO3 film. A former study showed such films to exhibit a net integral polarization direction with every grain being randomly oriented. However, the results presented here demonstrate a lamellar domain structure inside most of these single crystalline grains which is attributable to 90° domain walls. This lamellar domain distribution might be a result of mechanical strain at the surface and the interface to the substrate as predicted from theoretical calculations for epitaxially grown PbTiO3 films. In a switching experiment, the domains of a single grain were manipulated, showing that the lamellar structure recovers. This indicates that the lamellar domain arrangement is energetically favored in these samples.