Emergent chirality in the electric polarization texture of titanate superlattices

• DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1711652115
• Publication Date: 2018-01-16T16:43:31Z
• Authors: Padraic Shafer; Pablo García-Fern...; Pablo Aguado-Puente; Anoop R. Damodaran; Ajay K. Yadav; Christopher T. Ne...; Shang-Lin Hsu; Jacek C. Wojdeł; Jorge Íñiguez; Lane W. Martin; Elke Arenholz; Javier Junquera; Ramamoorthy Ramesh
• Keywords: Skyrmion; Chirality; Strontium titanate

Significance Many natural structures exhibit chirality that is essential to their functional interactions, yet the chiral electronic found in condensed matter systems have been primarily limited magnetic materials. Notably, electric dipole equivalent of skyrmions has remained conspicuously elusive. However, recent theoretical predictions and experimental observations continuous rotation polarization titanate superlattices suggests such complex oxide nanocomposites are ideal candidates for realizing configurations. Here we present results from PbTiO 3 SrTiO using a combination resonant soft X-ray diffraction second-principles simulations. We observe arrays polar line defects, spontaneously formed by interactions these artificial constructed two nonchiral lattices.