Invited
Visualization of switchable tribology of ferroelectrics using atomic force microscopy

Seongwoo Cho ¹ Iaroslav Gaponenko ^2,3 Kumara Cordero-Edwards ² Jordi Barceló- Mercader ⁴ Irene Arias ^4,5 Céline Lichtensteiger ² Jiwon Yeom ¹ Loïc Musy ² Hyunji Kim ¹ Gustau Catalan ^6,7 Patrycja Paruch ² Seungbum Hong ^1,8

¹Department of Materials of Science and Engineering, KAIST, Daejeon, South Korea
²Department of Quantum Matter Physics, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland
³G.W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, USA
⁴Laboratori de Càlcul Numèric, Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain
⁵(CIMNE), Centre Internacional de Mètodes Numèrics en Enginyeria, Barcelona, Spain
⁶Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia (ICN2), Campus Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
⁷(ICREA), Institució Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avançats, Barcelona, Spain
⁸KAIST Institute for NanoCentury (KINC), KAIST, Daejeon, South Korea

Here, we visualize the switchable friction and wear behavior of ferroelectrics using a nanoscale scanning probe. The down domains have lower friction coefficient than up domains, of which asymmetry is enabled by flexoelectrically coupled polarization in the up and down domains under a sufficiently high contact force. Using this switchable tribology and multi-pass patterning with a domain-based dynamic smart mask, we demonstrate three-dimensional nanostructuring exploiting the asymmetric wear rates of up and down domains, which can, furthermore, be scaled up to technologically relevant (mm-cm) size.

InvitedVisualization of switchable tribology of ferroelectrics using atomic force microscopy

Invited
Visualization of switchable tribology of ferroelectrics using atomic force microscopy