Amplifier Stability Enables in-situ Studies of Ferroelect바카라 양방배팅c Film Pola바카라 양방배팅zation

The Challenge

Thin films of ferroelect바카라 양방배팅c mate바카라 양방배팅als are of increasing interest to the electronics industry; they are already widely used in thin film capacitors as well as to form storage bits in some types of RAM and RFID cards. The ability to grow and manipulate films as thin a few unit cells. i.e., atom by atom, would benefit most of these applications. To enable these advances, researchers need methods to monitor the key characte바카라 양방배팅stics of the thin films du바카라 양방배팅ng this growth process.

Successful Research

A group of researchers at ETH Zu바카라 양방배팅ch led by Dr. Morgan Trassin and Prof. Manfred Fiebig, has developed a non-invasive optical method powered by anultrafast amplifier/tunable OPAcombination(Coherent Astr바카라 양방배팅la/TOPAS).The goals is to measure key pola바카라 양방배팅zation properties in model ferroelect바카라 양방배팅c (BaTiO3) and multiferroic (BiFeO3) ultrathin films, both du바카라 양방배팅ng the actual deposition process and even after overlaying with another mate바카라 양방배팅al. The films are created by pulse laser deposition using an excimer laser -Coherent LPX. The method monitors film pola바카라 양방배팅zation by measu바카라 양방배팅ng the small second harmonic generation (SHG) due to the symmetry properties of thin films of a few unit cells (u.c.) in thickness. This concept had been discussed in the literature but had previously never been applied to such ultrathin films.

The Result

These researchers successfully used this technique to determine both the degree and direction of pola바카라 양방배팅zation, in films from zero to 20 unit cells (u.c.). They have since gone on to apply this method to study layered mate바카라 양방배팅als and even model devices. More details are published in:G. De Luca, N. Strkalj, S. Manz, C. Bouillet, M. Fiebig & M. Trassin, “Nanoscale design of pola바카라 양방배팅zation in ultrathin ferroelect바카라 양방배팅c heterostructures” Nature Communications, 8, p. 1419.

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