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Thermal Quench Effects On Ferroelectric Domain Walls, P. Paruch, A. B. Kolton, X. Hong, C. H. Ahn, T. Giamarchi

Xia Hong Publications

Using piezoresponse force microscopy on epitaxial ferroelectric thin films, we have measured the evolution of domain wall roughening as a result of heat-quench cycles up to 735 ◦C, with the effective roughness exponent ζ changing from 0.25 to 0.5. We discuss two possible mechanisms for the observed ζ increase: a quench from a thermal one-dimensional configuration and from a locally equilibrated pinned configuration with a crossover from a two- to one-dimensional regime. We find that the postquench spatial structure of the metastable states, qualitatively consistent with the existence of a growing dynamical length scale whose ultraslow evolution is primarily controlled …