arXiv subjects

Volkmar Dierolf

Publications and source records attributed to Volkmar Dierolf.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Electromechanical Hysteresis in Phase Change Material Sb2S3

Antimony sulfide is an emerging phase change material for optical and electrical memory and computation elements. It has additionally been reported as a ferroelectric, with recent evidence from hysteresis in piezoresponse force microscopy. Here, we complete a rigorous set of piezoresponse force microscopy experiments on a congruently crystallized Sb2S3 glass-ceramic, where piezoelectric coupling should be forbidden in glassy Sb2S3. We replicate previous results and reveal that the behavior is absent in glassy Sb2S3 but show that the response originates primarily from non-piezoelectric contributions to the signal caused by an applied voltage. This hysteretic behavior in piezoresponse force microscopy is quite similar to some electrochemically active non-ferroelectric oxides, but uniquely, it appears here with a very clear spatial contrast that is decoupled from surface topography. This shows that the electromechanical signal reflects bulk-like properties and reveals differences in electrical behavior of crystalline and amorphous phases of Sb2S3.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2025

Site-selective enhancement of Eu emission in delta-doped GaN

Europium-doped gallium nitride (GaN:Eu) is a promising platform for classical and quantum optoelectronic applications. When grown using organometallic vapor-phase epitaxy, the dominant red emission from Eu exhibits an inhomogeneous photoluminescence (PL) spectrum due to contributions from several non-equivalent incorporation sites that can be distinguished with combined excitation emission spectroscopy. Energy transfer from the GaN bandgap to the majority site is inefficient, limiting the performance of GaN:Eu LEDs and resulting in an inhomogeneous emission spectrum dominated by disproportionate contributions from minority sites. In this work, we use site-selective spectroscopy to characterize the photoluminescence properties of delta-doped structures with alternating doped and undoped layers of varying thicknesses and demonstrate that they selectively enhance emission from the majority site when compared to uniformly-doped samples. Samples with 2-nm and 10-nm doped layers show much greater PL intensity per Eu concentration as well as more efficient energy transfer to the majority site, which are both highly desirable for creating power-efficient LEDs. Meanwhile, a sample with 1-nm doped layers shows emission only from the majority site, resulting in a narrow, homogeneous emission spectrum that is desirable for quantum technologies. This utilization of delta-doping has the potential to be broadly applicable for engineering desirable defect properties in rare-earth doped semiconductors.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2013

Investigation of electron beam induced migration of hydrogen in Mg-doped GaN using Eu as a probe

We demonstrate the use of hydrogen induced changes in the emission of isoelectric Eu ions, in Mg-doped p-type GaN, as a powerful probe to study the dynamics of hydrogen movement under electron beam irradiation. We identify, experimentally, a two-step process in the dissociation of Mg-H complexes and propose, based on density functional theory, that the presence of minority carriers and resulting charge states of the hydrogen drives this process.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗

arXiv2008

Threshold fields for antiparallel ferroelectric domain wall motion

While an ideal antiparallel ferroelectric wall is considered a unit cell in width (~0.5nm), we show using phase field modeling that the threshold field for moving this wall dramatically drops by 2-3 orders of magnitude if the wall were diffuse by only ~2-3nm. Since antiparallel domain walls are symmetry allowed in all ferroelectrics, and since domain wall broadening on nanometer scale is widely reported in literature, this mechanism is generally applicable to all ferroelectrics.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗