Chiral structures of electric polarization vectors quantified by X-ray resonant scattering

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-022-29359-5

Authors: Kook Tae Kim (Soongsil University) , Margaret R. Mccarter (Soongsil University) , Vladimir A. Stoica (Pennsylvania State University) , Sujit Das (University of California, Berkeley) , Christoph Klewe (Advanced Light Source) , Elizabeth P. Donoway (University of California, Berkeley) , David M. Burn (Diamond Light Source) , Padraic Shafer (Advanced Light Source) , Fanny Rodolakis (Advanced Photon Source) , Mauro A. P. Gonçalves (Institute of Physics of the Czech Academy of Sciences) , Fernando Gómez-Ortiz (Universidad de Cantabria) , Jorge Íñiguez (Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST); University of Luxembourg) , Pablo García-Fernández (Universidad de Cantabria) , Javier Junquera (Universidad de Cantabria) , Sandhya Susarla (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) , Stephen W. Lovesey (Diamond Light Source) , Gerrit Van Der Laan (Diamond Light Source) , Se Young Park (Soongsil University) , Lane W. Martin (University of California, Berkeley; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) , John W. Freeland (Advanced Photon Source) , Ramamoorthy Ramesh (University of California, Berkeley; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) , Dong Ryeol Lee (Soongsil University)
Co-authored by industrial partner: No

Type: Journal Paper
Journal: Nature Communications , VOL 13

State: Published (Approved)
Published: April 2022
Diamond Proposal Number(s): 24797

Abstract: Resonant elastic X-ray scattering (REXS) offers a unique tool to investigate solid-state systems providing spatial knowledge from diffraction combined with electronic information through the enhanced absorption process, allowing the probing of magnetic, charge, spin, and orbital degrees of spatial order together with electronic structure. A new promising application of REXS is to elucidate the chiral structure of electrical polarization emergent in a ferroelectric oxide superlattice in which the polarization vectors in the REXS amplitude are implicitly described through an anisotropic tensor corresponding to the quadrupole moment. Here, we present a detailed theoretical framework and analysis to quantitatively analyze the experimental results of Ti L-edge REXS of a polar vortex array formed in a PbTiO3/SrTiO3 superlattice. Based on this theoretical framework, REXS for polar chiral structures can become a useful tool similar to x-ray resonant magnetic scattering (XRMS), enabling a comprehensive study of both electric and magnetic REXS on the chiral structures.

Journal Keywords: Characterization and analytical techniques; Ferroelectrics and multiferroics

Diamond Keywords: Ferroelectricity

Subject Areas: Materials, Physics


Instruments: I10-Beamline for Advanced Dichroism - scattering

Added On: 11/04/2022 10:26

Documents:
s41467-022-29359-5.pdf

Discipline Tags:

Quantum Materials Physics Hard condensed matter - structures Materials Science

Technical Tags:

Scattering Resonant Elastic X-ray Scattering (REXS)