Invited
Optical control of polarization in ferroelectrics
2Physics Department and Institute for Nanoscience and Engineering, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, USA
3Materials Research and Technology Department, Luxembourg Institute of Technology, Esch/Alzette, Luxembourg
4Department of Physics and Materials Science, University of Luxembourg, Belvaux, Luxembourg
5International Center for Computational Method and Software (ICCMS) and Key Laboratory of Physics and Technology for Advanced Batteries, Jilin University, Changchun, China
Ferroelectric materials have gained a lot of attraction owing to their peculiar interaction with light. In particular, photovoltaic effects breaking the so-called Shockley-Queisser limit have been evidenced in BaTiO3 [1]. However, power conversion efficiencies remain small [2]. On the other, visible and infrared light provides a new route to control the ferroelectric order. Based on first-principles, we show that photo-excited carriers tend to destroy ferroelectric soft-mode instability in bulk ferroelectrics [3]. By contrast, playing on the electrostatic boundary conditions in PbTiO3/SrTiO3 superlattices, we show how photo-excited carriers now screen the polarization bound charges at the interface and favor the emergence of an out-of-plane polar phase [4].
At last, we also discuss how THz radiation can also control deterministically the polar order in a classical ferroelectric such as KNbO3. Using non-linear couplings between high frequency polar optical modes and the soft ferroelectric mode, it is shown that linearly polarized THz light tends to suppress the polarization along the direction of the polarization of the incident radiation [5]. It results in deterministic switching of the polarization in orthorombic KNbO3.
[1] J. E. Spanier et al., Nat. Photonics 10, 611 (2016).
[2] C. Paillard, X. Bai, I. C. Infante, M. Guennou, G. Geneste, M. Alexe, J. Kreisel, and B. Dkhil, Adv. Mater. 28, 5153 (2016).
[3] C. Paillard, E. Torun, L. Wirtz, J. Íñiguez, and L. Bellaiche, Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 087601 (2019).
[4] C. Dansou, C. Paillard and L. Bellaiche, Phys. Rev. B, accepted (2022).
[5] P. Chen, C. Paillard, H. J. Zhao, J. Íñiguez, and L. Bellaiche, Nat. Commun. 13, 2566 (2022).
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