Piush Behera1,Eric Parsonnet1,Sujit Das1,Lucas Caretta1,Ramamoorthy Ramesh1
University of California Berkeley1
Piush Behera1,Eric Parsonnet1,Sujit Das1,Lucas Caretta1,Ramamoorthy Ramesh1
University of California Berkeley1
The recent discovery of ferroelectric vortices in PbTiO<sub>3</sub>/SrTiO<sub>3</sub> heterostructures has opened the door to many novel phenomena such as control and manipulation of negative capacitance, chirality, toroidal moments, and collective dynamics. Here, we examined the electric field switching dynamics of the polar vortices; revealing the existence of multiple switching events which are correlated to a hierarchy of structural and polar switching events. We elucidate the nanosecond-scale dynamics and mechanism of the various switching events using traditional and time-resolved ferroelectric capacitance measurements in combination with <i>in-situ</i> imaging techniques. We also reveal how such multistate switching can potentially be used for non-destructive readout of the ferroelectric state.