Local piezo- and ferroelectric properties of γ-glycine single crystal observed via piezoresponse force microscopy

Abstract

Abstract In this work, we demonstrate an approach of local mechanical polishing processing to modify the type of intrinsic piezoelectric activity of γ-glycine polymorph grown in a form of a single crystal. By using the piezoresponse force microscopy, the increase in intensity for both out-of-plane (3 times) and in-plane (5 times) piezoelectric tensor components is demonstrated. Application of local switching spectroscopy reveals the piezoelectric behavior of non-polished and the ferroelectric behavior of polished areas being related to the local mechanical polishing-assistant rearrangement of NH 3+ tails of zwitterions in polymorph molecular chain of γ-glycine. These rearrangements were demonstrated to facilitate the switching behavior of the local dipole moment at the applied electric field surpassing the internal coercive field of about Ec ∼ 3 G V /m .