nl402158c_si_001.pdf (1.1 MB)
Multivariate Statistical Characterization of Charged and Uncharged Domain Walls in Multiferroic Hexagonal YMnO3 Single Crystal Visualized by a Spherical Aberration-Corrected STEM
journal contribution
posted on 2013-10-09, 00:00 authored by Takao Matsumoto, Ryo Ishikawa, Tetsuya Tohei, Hideo Kimura, Qiwen Yao, Hongyang Zhao, Xiaolin Wang, Dapeng Chen, Zhenxiang Cheng, Naoya Shibata, Yuichi IkuharaA 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.