From Oak Ridge National Laboratory: Ferroelectric Materials Boost Data Storage Potential

From Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Researchers at Oak Ridge National Laboratory used specialized tools to study materials at the atomic scale and analyze defects at the materials’ surface.

An atomic force microscope tip writes data in stable ferroelectric structures,
enabling reliable multistate storage at extremely small scales in this illustration.
(Credit: Morgan Manning/ORNL, U.S. Dept. of Energy)

Results of their research help to better understand these materials used for advanced electronics, enabling innovative data storage and computation methods. 

The team modified a commercial atomic force microscope with artificial intelligence to precisely assemble and detect patterns in bismuth ferrite. This method avoids invasive electrode deposition, which complicates the process and restricts how small the structures can be. 

“With AI, we can use the atomic force microscopy tip to align the electric polarization at the nanoscale, so we can write, read and erase these patterns — known as topological structures — on demand,” said Marti Checa, study’s leader, ORNL. 

Published in ACS Nano, this proof-of-concept highlights how multistate information manipulation boosts information storage potential. Building on ORNL’s work in nanoscale materials, this research aligns with ongoing innovations enhancing memory technologies.

Article: Autonomous Multistate Nanoencoding Using Combinatorial Ferroelectric Closure Domains in BiFeO₃

ACS Nano has published an article written by Marti Checa, Ruben Millan-Solsona, Yongtao Liu, Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, United States, Bharat Pant, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, Texas 76019, United States, Alexander Puretzky, Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, United States, Ye Cao, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, Texas 76019, United States, Puneet Kaur, Jan-Chi Yang, Department of Physics, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 70101, Taiwan, Liam Collins, Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, United States, Neus Domingo, Kyle P. Kelley, Stephen Jesse, Rama Vasudevan, Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee 37831, United States.

Abstract: “Recent advances in ferroic materials have identified topological defects as promising candidates for enabling additional functionalities in future electronic systems. The generation of stable and customizable polar topologies is needed to achieve multistates that enable beyond-binary device architectures. In this study, we show how to autonomously pattern on-demand highly tunable striped closure domains in pristine rhombohedral-phase BiFeO₃ thin films through precise scanning of a biased atomic force microscopy tip along carefully designed paths. By employing this strategy, we generate and manipulate closed-loop structures with high spatial resolution in an automated manner, allowing the creation of highly tunable and intricate topological domain structures that exhibit distinct polarization configurations without the need for electrode deposition or complex heterostructure growth. As a proof-of-concept for ferroelectric beyond-binary memory devices, we use such topological domains as multistates, engineering an alphabet and automating the symbolic writing/reading process using autonomous microscopy. The resulting information density is compared with that of current commercially available memory devices, demonstrating the potential of ferroelectric topological domains for multistate information storage applications.“