Accurate vertical nanoelectromechanical measurements

Abstract

Piezoresponse Force Microscopy (PFM) is capable of detecting strains in piezoelectric materials down to the picometer range. Driven by diverse application areas, numerous weaker electromechanical materials have emerged. The smaller signals associated with them have uncovered ubiquitous crosstalk challenges that limit the accuracy of measurements and that can even mask them entirely. Previously, using an interferometric displacement sensor (IDS), we demonstrated the existence of a special spot position immediately above the tip of the cantilever, where the signal due to body-electrostatic (BES) forces is nullified. Placing the IDS detection spot at this location allows sensitive and BES artifact-free electromechanical measurements. We denote this position as xIDS/L=1, where xIDS is the spot position along the cantilever and L is the distance between the base and tip. Recently, a similar approach has been proposed for BES nullification for the more commonly used optical beam deflection (OBD) technique, with a different null position at xOBD/L≈0.6. In the present study, a large number of automated, sub-resonance spot position dependent measurements were conducted on periodically poled lithium niobate. In this work, both IDS and OBD responses were measured simultaneously, allowing direct comparisons of the two approaches. In these extensive measurements, for the IDS, we routinely observed xIDS/L≈1. In contrast, the OBD null position ranged over a significant fraction of the cantilever length. Worryingly, the magnitudes of the amplitudes measured at the respective null positions were typically different, often by as much as 100%. Theoretically, we explain these results by invoking the presence of both BES and in-plane forces electromechanical forces acting on the tip using an Euler–Bernoulli cantilever beam model. Notably, the IDS measurements support the electromechanical response of lithium niobate predicted with a rigorous electro-elastic model of a sharp PFM tip in the strong indentation contact limit [deff≈12pm/V, Kalinin et al., Phys. Rev. B 70, 184101 (2004)].