Theoretical Prediction and Direct Observation of Metastable Non-Polar Regions in Domain Structure of Sn2P2S6 Ferroelectrics with Triple-Well Potential

This work presents the study of domain structure in uniaxial semiconductor ferroelectrics Sn2P2S6, performed by multi-scale theoretical simulations and piezoresponse force microscopy. We reveal that in spite of the second-order ferroelectric phase transition, domain structure contains metastable paraelectric regions between ferroelectric domains after cooling from paraelectric phase to the polar one. Theoretical model shows that this feature is a result of the three-well local potential, which enables metastable non-polar regions in polar environment. We have investigated temperature evolution of the width of non-polar regions in heating-cooling cycle, which is in a good agreement with theoretical results.

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