2026-01-05 オークリッジ国立研究所（ORNL）
An atomic force microscope tip writes data in stable ferroelectric structures, enabling reliable multistate storage at extremely small scales in this illustration. Credit: Morgan Manning/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy
＜関連情報＞
- https://www.ornl.gov/news/ferroelectric-materials-boost-data-storage-potential
- https://pubs.acs.org/doi/full/10.1021/acsnano.5c07423
BiFeO3におけるコンビナトリアル強誘電体閉包ドメインを用いた自律的多状態ナノエンコーディング Autonomous Multistate Nanoencoding Using Combinatorial Ferroelectric Closure Domains in BiFeO3
Marti Checa,Ruben Millan-Solsona,Yongtao Liu,Bharat Pant,Alexander Puretzky,Ye Cao,Puneet Kaur,Jan-Chi Yang,Liam Collins,Neus Domingo,Kyle P. Kelley,Stephen Jesse,and Rama Vasudevan
ACS Nano Published:Published July 22, 2025
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.5c07423
Abstract
Recent advances in ferroic materials have identified topological defects as promising candidates for enabling additional functionalities in future electronic systems. The generation of stable and customizable polar topologies is needed to achieve multistates that enable beyond-binary device architectures. In this study, we show how to autonomously pattern on-demand highly tunable striped closure domains in pristine rhombohedral-phase BiFeO3 thin films through precise scanning of a biased atomic force microscopy tip along carefully designed paths. By employing this strategy, we generate and manipulate closed-loop structures with high spatial resolution in an automated manner, allowing the creation of highly tunable and intricate topological domain structures that exhibit distinct polarization configurations without the need for electrode deposition or complex heterostructure growth. As a proof-of-concept for ferroelectric beyond-binary memory devices, we use such topological domains as multistates, engineering an alphabet and automating the symbolic writing/reading process using autonomous microscopy. The resulting information density is compared with that of current commercially available memory devices, demonstrating the potential of ferroelectric topological domains for multistate information storage applications.
