2020/07/31 by Adeel Y. Abid, Yuanwei Sun, Abid, Adeel Y. +33
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Condensed matter physics #Electrical engineering #Electronic and Structural Properties of Oxides #Engineering #FOS: Physical sciences #Ferroelectric and Piezoelectric Materials #Ferroelectricity #Ferromagnetism #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Materials science #Multiferroics and related materials #Nanotechnology #Optoelectronics #Physics #Polar #Polar vortex #Quantum mechanics #Skyrmion #Spintronics #Topology (electrical circuits) #cond-mat.mtrl-sci
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2007.15810
published in arXiv (Cornell University) (Cornell University)
arxiv created 2020/07/31 · openalex publication_date 2020/07/31 · arxiv updated 2020/08/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Nontrivial topological structures offer rich playground in condensed matter physics including fluid dynamics, superconductivity, and ferromagnetism, and they promise alternative device configurations for post-Moore spintronics and electronics. Indeed, magnetic skyrmions are actively pursued for high-density data storage, while polar vortices with exotic negative capacitance may enable ultralow power consumption in microelectronics. Following extensive investigations on a variety of magnetic textures including vortices, domain walls and skyrmions in the past decades, studies on polar topologies have taken off in recent years, resulting in discoveries of closure domains, vortices, and skyrmions in ferroelectric materials. Nevertheless, the atomic-scale creation of topological polar structures is largely confined in a single ferroelectric system, PbTiO3 (PTO) with large polarization, casting doubt on the generality of polar topologies and limiting their potential applications. In this work, we successfully create previously unrealized atomic-scale polar antivortices in the nominally nonpolar SrTiO3 (STO), expanding the reaches of topological structures and completing an important missing link in polar topologies. The work shed considerable new insight into the formation of topological polar structures, and offers guidance in searching for new polar textures.