Time-resolved X-ray diffraction catches polarization switching in ferroelectric thin films

The traditional tools of nanotechnology - the atomic force microscope and the scanning tunneling microscope - enable scientists to see atoms, but not their response to events, which at that scale occur in the order of nano seconds or shorter. Professor P. Evans (Univ of Wisconsin-Madison) and his colleagues recently succeeded in visualizing domain wall motion during polarization switching of a Pb(Zr,Ti)O₃ capacitor using time-resolved x-ray microdiffraction. The work was done using Argonne National Laboratory's Advanced Photon Source, a synchrotron light source capable of generating very tightly focused beams of X-rays. The X-rays are delivered to the sample in fast pulses over an area no larger than hundreds of nm. For more information, see the paper, "Nanosecond Domain Wall Dynamics in Ferroelectric Pb(Zr,Ti)O₃ Thin Films", A. Grigoriev et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 187601 (2006).