ELECTRON-ACOUSTIC IMAGING OF BATIO3 SINGLE-CRYSTALS

Scanning electron acoustic microscopy (SEAM) has been used in the obse rvation of ferroelectric domain configurations in barium titanate sing le crystals. The contribution to the image contrasts is related to sig nal generation through a piezoelectric coupling mechanism. The results prove that SEAM really has the ability to show not only the surface s hape and domain structures but also the subsurface domain structures. Furthermore, SEAM is a convenient, fast and nondestructive way of obse rving the ferroelectric domains compared with other methods. (C) 1996 American Institute of Physics.