IUVSTA 15th International Vacuum Congress (IVC-15), AVS 48th International Symposium (AVS-48), 11th International Conference on Solid Surfaces (ICSS-11)
    Electronics Monday Sessions
       Session EL-MoM

Paper EL-MoM1
Quantitative Analysis of Piezoresponse Force Microscopy: Electrostatic vs. Electromechanic Interactions

Monday, October 29, 2001, 9:40 am, Room 130

Session: Ferroelectric
Presenter: D.A. Bonnell, University of Pennsylvania
Authors: S.V. Kalinin, University of Pennsylvania
D.A. Bonnell, University of Pennsylvania
Correspondent: Click to Email
One of the critical aspects of the behavior of ferroelectric materials, both in the context of nano domains and for thin films, is the inter relation between atomic polarization and compensation charge. Piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM) has provided insight on domain structure and polarization reversal processes on the nanometer level. However, the imaging mechanism in PFM is complex in that both electrostatic and electromechanic interactions can contribute to image contrast. Here we analyze the electrostatic and electromechanical contrast in PFM using analytical solutions for the electrostatic sphere-dielectric plane problem coupled to Hertzian contact for the piezoelectric indentation problem. With this analysis local piezo electric properties can be quantified from traditional PFM and we suggest a novel variant that reduces the effects of system resonances to the contrast. The latter allows the measurement excitation and the domain switching bias to be decoupled. We use this approach on BaTiO@sub 3@ (100) to examine compensation charge and switching behavior.