Evolution of weak ferroelectricity dielectric response in PbZrO3 antiferroelectric thin films

In this study, the ferroelectric domain wall contributions to the permittivity is investigated in a PbZrO3 antiferroelectric thin film far from its antiferroelectric-ferroelectric field transition EAF (E ≤ 150 kV/cm). The lattice contribution to the permittivity increases as function of polarization electric field EDC but also presents two additional small peaks. The increase is due to the antiparallel dipoles reoriented along the electric field direction (antiferroelectric contribution) and the two peaks correspond to a ferroelectric butterfly loop. The two phenomena are added to the permittivity, which make it difficult to decorrelate them. The vibration and pinning/unpinning contributions of the domain walls present only a ferroelectric butterfly loops but they do not tend to zero at infinite fields, which suggests that the ferroelectricity does not disappear completely. Dielectric losses decrease as a function of the polarization (Lorentzian function) due to a reduction of the ferroelectric domain walls density.