TY: JOUR T1 - Ferroelectric characterization of aligned barium titanate nanofibres A1 - Sa, Pedro A1 - Barbosa, Jose A1 - Bdikin, Igor A1 - Almeida, Bernardo A1 - Rolo, Anabela G. A1 - Gomes, Etelvina De Matos A1 - Belsley, Michael A1 - Kholkin, Andrei L. A1 - Isakov, Dmitry N2 - We report the synthesis, structural and ferroelectric characterization of continuous well-aligned nanofibres of barium titanate produced by the electrospinning technique. The fibres with average diameter of 150-400 nm consist of connected nanoparticles of BaTiO3 stacked together to form the shape of a long filament. The tetragonal phase in the obtained nanofibres was revealed by the x-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy and has been also confirmed by the second harmonic generation (SHG) and piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM). The temperature dependence of the SHG in the vicinity of the paraelectric-ferroelectric phase transition suggests that barium titanate nanofibres are indeed ferroelectric with an apparent glass-like state caused by metastable polar nanoregions. The existence of domain structure and local switching studied by PFM present clear evidence of the polar phase at room temperature. UR - https://ria.ua.pt/handle/10773/20634 Y1 - 2013 PB - IOP PUBLISHING LTD