Variation of contact resonance frequency during domain switching in PFM measurements for ferroelectric materials

Piezoresponse Force Spectroscopy (PFS) is a powerful method widely used for measuring the nanoscale ferroelectric responses of the materials. However, it is found that certain non-ferroelectric materials can also generate similar responses from the PFS measurements due to many other factors, hence, it is believed that PFS alone is not sufficient to differentiate the ferroelectric and non-ferroelectric materials. On the other hands, this work shows that there are distinct differences in contact resonance frequency variation during the PFS measurements for ferroelectric and non-ferroelectric materials. Therefore, a new, simple and effective method is proposed to differentiate the responses from the ferroelectric and non-ferroelectric materials, this new analysis uses contact resonance frequency responses during the PFS measurements as a new parameter to differentiate the PFS measured responses from different materials.
26 pages, 6 Figures