Local ferroelectric responses of epitaxial PbTiO3 thin films to heated atomic force microscopy

• Local heating of ferroelectric domain by heated AFM cantilever.
• Well-defined ferroelectricity of PbTiO3 films grown by pulsed laser deposition.
• Ferroelectric domain size control of PbTiO3 by electric field and temperature.
• Decrease in activation energy of ferroelectric polarization with local heating.

We report the dependence of ferroelectric domain size of epitaxially grown PbTiO3 (PTO) thin films on Nb-doped SrTiO3 substrate to temperature. PbTiO3 exhibited well-defined ferroelectricity with a high remnant polarization of about 60 μC/cm2. Based on piezoelectric force microscopy (PFM) measurements, we confirmed that the ferroelectric domain size of PbTiO3 thin films depends on electric field and temperature. The minimum ferroelectric domain size could be reduced by the locally heated atomic force microscopy (h-AFM) technique.

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