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The thickness effect in ferroelectric thin films has been theoretically investigated using the Landau–Khalatnikov theory. Ferroelectric properties such as the hysteresis loop, and its associated coercive field and the remanent polarization of various film thicknesses have been numerically simulated. In this simulation, the thin film was modeled by the stacking of layers, each of which has unique parameters for the Landau free energy. Due to the interfacial effects near the electrodes, the parameters for the surface layers are different from those for the bulk. The simulated result shows that the coercive field decreases while the remanent polarization increases with thickness. Both of these trends qualitatively agree with experiments. © 2003 American Institute of Physics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a combined scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and low-temperature magnetotransport study of Si:P δ-doped layers on vicinal Si(001) substrates. The substrates were misoriented 4° toward [110] resulting in a high step density on the starting growth surface. Atomically resolved STM was used to study all stages of the fabrication. We find only a weak influence of the high step density and discuss the implications for the fabrication δ-doped layers and planar nanoscale Si:P devices by scanning tunneling lithography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]