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Keynote Speaker

Prof. Dr. Lukas Eng

Institute of Applied Physics, Technical University Dresden, Germany

“Pushing the limits in PFM and MFM”

Lukas M. Eng 1,2 , M. Röper, J. Schmidt 1 , and SD Seddon 1

1 Institute of Applied Physics, TU Dresden, Nöthnitzerstr. 61, 01187 Dresden, Germany
2 ct.qmat: Würzburg-Dresden Cluster of Excellence - EXC 2147, TU Dresden, Germany

 

 

Piezoresponse Force Microscopy (PFM) has a 31-year track record [1] and has since witnessed widespread uses to image and manipulate a manifold of polar and ferroic materials [2] including 2D materials [3]. Soon after the initial steps in 1993 realizing vertical (out-of-plane) PFM [1], PFM was extended to simultaneously map the in-plane piezoelectric component [4] as well, and then complemented for full 3D imaging and manipulation [5 ].
I will show in this talk that even today, PFM still provides a lot of challenges and peculiarities: the issue in particular here is the ability of PFM to map into the depth of a sample [6], hence achieving a sub-surface resolution. that will be shown to be mainly determined by the PFM tip radius [7]. That theoretical and experimental work underlines the importance of how to select and prepare adequate dielectric substrates for any PFM-related work, a topic that has been completely overlooked so far.

Moreover, 3D PFM has inspired us to also extend standard vertical (out-of-plane) Magnetic Force Microscopy (V-MFM) for the simultaneous multi-dimensional (3D) mapping of magnetic stray fields. Such 3D fields are everywhere, from the toy magnet up to magnetic Bloch-[8-10], Néel- [11,12] and Anti-Skyrmions [13,14]. By complementing V-MFM with lateral (in-plane) MFM (L-MFM) [15], magnetic stray field gradients can now be mapped in a much more complete way. Results and challenges of 3D MFM by discussing the overall performance and signal-to-noise ratio will be presented here.

 

References:

[1] K. Franke et al., Surf. Sci. Lett. 302 , L283 (1994); https://doi.org/10.1016/0039-6028(94)91089-8 .

[2] K. Franke et al., Proc. IEEE ISAF/ECAPD/PFM , 1 (2016); https://doi.org/10.1109/ISAF.2016.7578100 .

[3]   E. Nasr Esfahani et al., Nano Energy 52 , 117 (2018); https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nanoen.2018.07.050 .

[4] M. Abplanalp et al., Appl. Phys. A 66 , S231 (1998); https://doi.org/10.1007/s003390051136 .

[5] LM Eng et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 74 , 233 (1999); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.123266 .

[6] F. Johann et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 94 , 172904 (2009); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3126490 .

[7] M. Roeper et al., J. Appl. Phys. 135 , 224102 (2024); https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0206784 .

[8] P. Milde et al., Science 340 , 1076 (2013); https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1234657 .

[9]    S. Zhang et al., Nano Lett. 16 , 3285 (2016); https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b00845 .

[10] P. Milde et al., Phys. Rev. B 100 (2019) 024408 (2019); https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.100.024408 .

[11] I. Kézsmárki et al., Nat. Master. 14 , 1116 (2015); https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4402 .

[12] E. Neuber et al., J. Phys.: Cond. Matter 30 , 445402 (2018); https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-648X/aae448 .

[13] BE Zuniga Cespedes et al., PRB 103 , 184411 (2021); https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.103.184411 .

[14] M. Winter et al., Commun. Master. 3 , 102 (2022); https://doi.org/10.1038/s43246-022-00323-6 .

[15] J. Schmidt et al., (2024); https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2308.08377 .