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Updated: Aug 15, 2025

Fabrication of Spatially Confined Complex Oxides
Published on: July 1, 2013
Configurable Crack Wall Conduction in a Complex Oxide
Youngki Yeo1,2, Soo-Yoon Hwang3, Jinwook Yeo4
1Department of Physics, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon34141, Republic of Korea.
Abstract:
Mobile defects in solid-state materials play a significant role in memristive switching and energy-efficient neuromorphic computation. Techniques for confining and manipulating point defects may have great promise for low-dimensional memories. Here, we report the spontaneous gathering of oxygen vacancies at strain-relaxed crack walls in SrTiO3 thin films grown on DyScO3 substrates as a result of flexoelectricity. We found that electronic conductance at the crack walls was enhanced compared to the crack-free region, by a factor of 104. A switchable asymmetric diode-like feature was also observed, and the mechanism is discussed, based on the electrical migration of oxygen vacancy donors in the background of Sr-deficient acceptors forming n-n or n-n junctions. By tracing the temporal relaxations of surface potential and lattice expansion of a formed region, we determine the diffusivity of mobile defects in crack walls to be 1.4 × 10-16 cm2/s, which is consistent with oxygen vacancy kinetics.
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