Research Themes +
Energy Technologies Area (ETA) researchers are continually building on the strong scientific foundation we have developed over the past 50 years. We address the world’s most pressing climate challenges by bringing to market energy-efficient innovations across the buildings, transportation, and industrial sectors. ETA is at the forefront of developing better batteries for electric vehicles; improving the country's aging electrical grid and innovating distributed energy and storage solutions; developing grid-interactive, efficient buildings; and providing the most comprehensive market and data analysis worldwide for renewable technologies like wind and solar.
Strategic Initiatives +
The Energy Technologies Area (ETA) Strategic Plan is the guiding force for our research and development for the next ten years. It clearly charts a path toward clean-energy solutions and focuses on five detailed Strategic Initiatives. The Plan provides an in-depth look at how ETA is accelerating research to provide affordable, clean energy to all while accomplishing deep, economy-wide decarbonization, looking to avoid a rise in global average temperature while simultaneously developing solutions to increase humanity's resilience to extreme weather volatility.
Publications
News +
For media inquiries,
please contact ETA
Interim Communications Manager
Kiran Julin

kjulin@lbl.gov
About Us +
The Energy Technologies Area (ETA) is unique in translating fundamental scientific discoveries into scalable technology adoption. Our approach combines an understanding of the marketplace and the role of state and federal regulation and policies. ETA's research drives real-world, practical results that affect and improve the everyday lives of Americans and those across the globe. Saving energy and battling the Climate Crisis are key to the foundation of our research, which is driven by technoeconomic analysis and in-lab experimentation and discovery.

Dynamic conductivity of ferroelectric domain walls in BiFeO3

Publication Type

Journal Article

Authors

Maksymovych, P., J. Seidel, Y.H. Chu, P. Wu, A.P. Baddorf, L.-Q. Chen, S.V. Kalinin, Ramamoorthy Ramesh

DOI

10.1021/nl104363x

Abstract

Topological walls separating domains of continuous polarization, magnetization, and strain in ferroic materials hold promise of novel electronic properties, that are intrinsically localized on the nanoscale and that can be patterned on demand without change of material volume or elemental composition. We have revealed that ferroelectric domain walls in multiferroic BiFeO 3 are inherently dynamic electronic conductors, closely mimicking memristive behavior and contrary to the usual assumption of rigid conductivity. Applied electric field can cause a localized transition between insulating and conducting domain walls, tune domain wall conductance by over an order of magnitude, and create a quasicontinuous spectrum of metastable conductance states. Our measurements identified that subtle and microscopically reversible distortion of the polarization structure at the domain wall is at the origin of the dynamic conductivity. The latter is therefore likely to be a universal property of topological defects in ferroelectric semiconductors. © 2011 American Chemical Society.

Journal

Nano Letters

Volume

Year of Publication

2011

ISSN

15306984

Notes

cited By 161

Research Areas

Ramesh Lab