Coupling of Ferroelectric Domain Walls with Liquid and Magnetic Interfaces

<br/>Ferroelectric domain walls strongly interact with its surroundings. In ferroelectrics thin films with exposed surfaces investigated by piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM), the main source of external screening charges is the atmosphere and the water neck, and therefore relative humidity (RH) plays a major role. In this context the speed as well as the creep-factor <i>m</i> describing the domain wall kinetics follow the behavior of water adsorption represented by the adsorption isotherm, indicating that the screening mechanism dominating the switching dynamics is the thickness and the structure of adsorbed water structure and its associated dielectric constant and ionic mobility.[1] On the other hand, the ferroelectrics can couple to other ferroic physical magnitudes in heterostructures such as FE/FM multilayers. In this context, the magnetic structure of magnetoelastic thin films can be manipulated by the tunable piezoelectric strain underneath: here I will show how in this case the dynamics of magnetic domain walls are dominated by the ferroelectric domain walls creating pinning sites that nucleate vortex like structures with predominant out of plane magnetic moments.[2]<br/><br/><b>Reference(s)</b><br/>[1] I.Spasojevic, A.Verdaguer, G.Catalan, N.Domingo, Adv. Electron.Mater. 2021, 2100650<br/>[2] Ch. Stefani, V. Sireus, J.Sort, E. Menendez, N. Domingo, <i>manuscript under preparation</i>