Influence of interfacial dislocations on hysteresis loops of ferroelectric films

We investigated the influence of dislocations, located at the interface of a ferroelectric film and its underlying substrate, on the ferroelectric hysteresis loop including the remanent polarization and coercive field using phase-field simulations. We considered epitaxial ferroelectric BaTiO3 films and found that the hysteresis loop is strongly dependent on the type and density of interfacial dislocations. The dislocations that stabilize multiple ferroelectric variants and domains reduce the coercive field, and consequently, the corresponding remanent polarization also decreases.