Interferometric imaging of nonlocal electromechanical power transduction in ferroelectric domains

Edited by Ramamoorthy Ramesh, University of California, Berkeley, CA, and accepted by Editorial Board Member Zachary Fisk April 11, 2018 (received for review December 27, 2017)
May 7, 2018
115 (21) 5338-5342

Significance

The conversion between electrical and acoustic signals in piezoelectric materials is of fundamental importance for their applications. Because of the much slower speed of sound than speed of light in solids, mesoscopic imaging is imperative for the study of electroacoustic behaviors at microwave frequencies. In this paper, the electromechanical power transduction in lithium niobate domains is spatially resolved by microwave impedance microscopy. Because of the sign reversal of piezoelectric tensor in opposite domains, the interaction between electric fields and elastic waves leads to fringe patterns that are fundamentally different from the acoustic displacement fields. This approach uncovers hidden information in the piezoelectric transduction process and opens a frontier to explore various elastic phenomena in materials and devices.

Abstract

The electrical generation and detection of elastic waves are the foundation for acoustoelectronic and acoustooptic systems. For surface acoustic wave devices, microelectromechanical/nanoelectromechanical systems, and phononic crystals, tailoring the spatial variation of material properties such as piezoelectric and elastic tensors may bring significant improvements to the system performance. Due to the much slower speed of sound than speed of light in solids, it is desirable to study various electroacoustic behaviors at the mesoscopic length scale. In this work, we demonstrate the interferometric imaging of electromechanical power transduction in ferroelectric lithium niobate domain structures by microwave impedance microscopy. In sharp contrast to the traditional standing-wave patterns caused by the superposition of counterpropagating waves, the constructive and destructive fringes in microwave dissipation images exhibit an intriguing one-wavelength periodicity. We show that such unusual interference patterns, which are fundamentally different from the acoustic displacement fields, stem from the nonlocal interaction between electric fields and elastic waves. The results are corroborated by numerical simulations taking into account the sign reversal of piezoelectric tensor in oppositely polarized domains. Our work paves ways to probe nanoscale electroacoustic phenomena in complex structures by near-field electromagnetic imaging.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Z.-X. Shen, S.-W. Cheong, and S. Artyukhin for helpful discussions. The MIM work (L.Z., X.W., Y.-L.H., and K.L.) was supported by NSF Division of Materials Research Award 1707372. The numerical simulation (H.D. and Z.W.) was supported by the Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering and NSF Division of Engineering Grant EFMA-1641069. The MIM instrumentation was supported by the US Army Research Laboratory and the US Army Research Office under Grant W911NF1410483. W. Wang and W. Wu were supported by US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, under Award DE-SC0018153.

Supporting Information

Supporting Information (PDF)
Movie S1.
Video clip of the time evolution of (A) x, (B) y, and (C) z components of the simulated velocity fields. Scale bar and annotations are the same as Fig. S4. The propagation of the waves generated by the line source, such as P-SAW, slow transverse wave, and longitudinal bulk wave, can be directly visualized.

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Information & Authors

Information

Published in

The cover image for PNAS Vol.115; No.21
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Vol. 115 | No. 21
May 22, 2018
PubMed: 29735698

Classifications

Submission history

Published online: May 7, 2018
Published in issue: May 22, 2018

Keywords

  1. microwave impedance microscopy
  2. electromechanical power transduction
  3. surface acoustic wave
  4. interference patterns
  5. ferroelectric material

Acknowledgments

We thank Z.-X. Shen, S.-W. Cheong, and S. Artyukhin for helpful discussions. The MIM work (L.Z., X.W., Y.-L.H., and K.L.) was supported by NSF Division of Materials Research Award 1707372. The numerical simulation (H.D. and Z.W.) was supported by the Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering and NSF Division of Engineering Grant EFMA-1641069. The MIM instrumentation was supported by the US Army Research Laboratory and the US Army Research Office under Grant W911NF1410483. W. Wang and W. Wu were supported by US Department of Energy, Office of Science, Basic Energy Sciences, under Award DE-SC0018153.

Notes

This article is a PNAS Direct Submission. R.R. is a guest editor invited by the Editorial Board.

Authors

Affiliations

Lu Zheng1
Department of Physics, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712;
Hui Dong1
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712;
Xiaoyu Wu
Department of Physics, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712;
Yen-Lin Huang
Department of Physics, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712;
Wenbo Wang
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854
Weida Wu
Department of Physics and Astronomy, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712;
Department of Physics, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712;

Notes

2
To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: [email protected] or [email protected].
Author contributions: K.L. designed research; L.Z., H.D., X.W., Y.-L.H., W. Wang, and W. Wu performed research; L.Z., H.D., X.W., Y.-L.H., W. Wang, W. Wu, Z.W., and K.L. analyzed data; and Z.W. and K.L. wrote the paper.
1
L.Z. and H.D. contributed equally to this work.

Competing Interests

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

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    Interferometric imaging of nonlocal electromechanical power transduction in ferroelectric domains
    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
    • Vol. 115
    • No. 21
    • pp. 5301-E4952

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