Effect of thermal annealing on ferroelectric domain structures in poly(vinylidene-fluoride-trifluorethylene) Langmuir-Blodgett thin films

Authors

Zhiyong Xiao, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
J. Hamblin, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Shashi Poddar, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
Stephen Ducharme, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow
P. Paruch, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Xia Hong, University of Nebraska–LincolnFollow

Date of this Version

8-2014

Citation

JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS 116, 066819 (2014); doi: 10.1063/1.4891396

Comments

Copyright (c) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC. Used by permission.

Abstract

We report a piezo-response force microscopy study of the effect of thermal annealing on ferroelectric domain structures in 6 to 20 monolayer (11 to 36 nm) polycrystalline poly(vinylidene-fluoridetrifluorethylene) thin films prepared using the Langmuir-Blodgett approach. Stripe-shape domains have been created at room temperature and subjected to thermal annealing at progressively higher temperatures up to the ferroelectric Curie temperature T_C of approximately 110 °C. The static configuration of the domain walls exhibits no appreciable temperature dependence after thermal annealing, with the domain-wall roughness exponent ζ ranging from 0.4 to 0.5. Above 80 °C, we observed spontaneous polarization reversal at randomly scattered local sites in both polarization states. The number of domain nucleation centers increases rapidly as a function of temperature. We compared the thermally driven domain formation in ferroelectric polymers with those observed in ferroelectric oxides and attributed the difference to the distinct mechanisms for domain formation in these two systems.