Eur. Phys. J. B 49, 141-146 (2006)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2006-00050-0

X-ray photoelectron diffraction study of ultrathin PbTiO₃ films

¹ Institut de Physique, Université de Neuchâtel, Rue A.-L. Breguet 1, 2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland
² DPMC, Université de Genève, 24 Quai Ernest-Ansermet, 1211 Genève, Switzerland
³ Centro Mixto CSIC-UPV/EHU, 20080 San Sebastián, Spain
⁴ Department of Physics and Materials Science, City University of Hong Kong, 83 Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong

Corresponding author: ^a Laurent.Despont@Unine.ch

Received: 19 October 2005
Revised: 25 November 2005
Published online: 17 February 2006

Abstract

Full hemispherical X-ray photoelectron diffraction (XPD) experiments have been performed to investigate at the atomic level ultrathin epitaxial c-axis oriented PbTiO₃ (PTO) films grown on Nb-doped SrTiO₃ substrates. Comparison between experiment and theory allows us to identify a preferential ferroelectric polarization state in a 60 Å -thick PTO film. Multiple scattering theory based on a cluster-model [ Phys. Rev. B , 075404 (2001)] is used to simulate the experiments.