Structural coupling and nanoscale modulation in ferroelectric heterostructures

The physical properties of perovskite oxides are strongly sensitive to subtle changes in their structure, offering a high degree of tunability by external stimuli such as pressure or epitaxial strain, widely exploited to engineer novel physical phenomena. However, a less studied approach to tailor their properties is the application of structural distortions through ferroelectric/ferroelastic templating. We have previously shown that a ferroelastic domain structure in ferroelectric PbTiO3 can periodically modulate the structure of ferromagnetic metal SrRuO3. However, the characteristics of this structural coupling are still unknown, with observations limited to invasive microscopy studies on a limited number of samples. We propose a diffuse x-ray scattering study to understand in detail the structural coupling between PbTiO3 and SrRuO3 in a systematic series of heterostructures.