Noncontact Atomic Force Microscopy - Yale School of Engineering ...

Local ferroelectric and magnetic investigations on
multiferroic thin films
P.II-32
Ulrich Zerweck 1 , D. Köhler 1 , P. Milde 1 , Ch. Loppacher 2 , S. Geprägs 3 , S.T.B. Goennenwein
3 , R. Gross 3 , L.M. Eng 1
1 Institute of Applied Photophysics / Technische Universität Dresden, 01062 Dresden, Germany
2 L2MP, Université Paul Cézanne, 13397 Marseille , France
3 Walther-Meißner-Institut / Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 85748 Garching, Germany.
Multiferroic materials, which combine ferroelectric and ferromagnetic properties, are
promising candidates for novel nanoscale switching and memory devices, especially if
there is a coupling between those properties.
Here, we present low-temperature noncontact atomic force microscopy (nc-AFM) - in
particular magnetic force microscopy (MFM) and Kelvin probe force microscopy
(KPFM) - investigations of multiferroic BiCrO3 and BiFeO3 thin films prepared by
pulsed laser deposition (PLD) as described in [1]. In addition to the nc-AFM
investigations, piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM) was used to study the ferroelectric
switching behaviour of the thin films.
Although the separation of magnetic and ferroelectric properties is nontrivial due to the
long range nature of both of the related forces, we were able to clearly separate the two
different domain types by simultaneously running KPFM and MFM.
[1] S. Geprägs et al., Phil. Mag. Lett. 87: 141 (2007).
160