Scanning Nonlinear Dielectric Microscope

A sub-nanometer resolution scanning nonlinear dielectric microscope (SNDM) was developed for observing ferroelectric polarization. We also demonstrate that the resolution of SNDM is higher than that of a conventional piezo-response imaging. Secondly, we report new SNDM technique detecting higher nonlinear dielectric constants s3333 and ε33333. Higher order nonlinear dielectric imaging provides higher lateral and depth resolution. Thirdly, a new type of scanning nonlinear dielectric microscope probe, called the ε311-type probe, and a system to measure the ferroelectric polarization component parallel to the surface were developed. Finally, the formation of artificial small inverted domain is reported to demonstrate that SNDM system is very useful as a nano-domain engineering tool. The nano-size domain dots were successfully formed in LiTaO₃ single crystal. This means that we can obtain a very high density ferroelectric data storage with the density above 1 Tbits/inch².