Abstract
This work concentrates on developing PP-something devices with high fidelity domain controllability for use in the commercial and academic applications that use QPM technology. This study also attempts to provide further insight into the kinetics of domain formation to elucidate a universal model for the fabrication of PPCLN, PP-MgO:CLN, and other advanced materials such as MgO:SLN, SLT, and MgO:SLT among others. The model descried in Chapter 2 is a general discussion of domain evolution kinetics, dominated factors for domain quality and the optimization method for electric field poling of ferroelectric crystals. The characterizing steps and method of optimize each dominated factors in Chapter 5 provide an example for developing poling process of new materials. We provide a general guide for characterizing and fabrication of advance crystals. This includes nucleation optimization, optimization of poling field through compromise among sensitivity of wall velocity to applied field, nucleation rate and switching time. The characteristic of different crystal can be included in the pool of utilizable factors, thus the temperature dependence of conductivity, switching time andwall velocity; dependence of coercive field and wall velocity on the defect structure. Few advance techniques have been introduced in order to help in pushing down to shorter grating periods, this includes interlace-comb structure, sectional structure and chemical patterning. A compact, liquid electrolyte free and computer controlled poling station were introduced. Through this setup, it is possible to alter the crystal property during poling process, precise control of domain duty cycle, shorten the processing time of lithography patterning (if vacuum is used as insulator instead ofphotoresist) and increase wafer utilization. From this research, we successfully fabricated high fidelity,0.5mm-thick PPCLN with grating periods above 4mm in a reasonable length (e.g. 5cm). The measured conversion efficiencies of 4mm-period and 6.5mm-period PPCLN are 2.4%/W/cm and 1.8~2%/W/cm respectively. A recipe for fabricating 1mm-thick PPCLN was introduced. The available grating periods is above 18mm. Through the optimization process of PPMgO:CLN we obtained a nucleation density of0.2~1.2 nuclei per micron. From our knowledge it is the first time that an exponential relationship between switching time/current and temperature have been measured, which is similar to the exponential relationship between switching time/current and applied field presented in other articles.Through this research we successfully fabricated high fidelity, 0.5mm-thick PPMgO:CLN with grating periods above 10mm in a reasonable length.