Switching the chirality of a ferroelectric vortex in designed nanostructures by a homogeneous electric field

Nanometer-scale ferroelectric vortex that is characterized by a curling polarization around a core is regarded as a new state of matter. The control of vortex chirality by homogeneous electric field is a key to the utilization of vortices in technological applications, but remains elusive since the toroidal moment of a ferroelectric vortex is conjugate to a curled electric field rather than to a homogeneous one. Here, the authors design free-standing nanodots with rational nanostructures and demonstrate using phase-field modelling that the chirality of the polarization vortex in such designed nanodots is deterministically switched by a homogeneous electric field.