GaV4S8 is a multiferroic semiconductor hosting Néel-type magnetic skyrmions dressed with electric polarization. At Ts = 42 K, the compound undergoes a structural phase transition of weakly first-order, from a non-centrosymmetric cubic phase at high temperatures to a polar rhombohedral structure at low temperatures. Below Ts, ferroelectric domains are formed with the electric polarization pointing along any of the four 〈111〉 axes. Although in this material the size and the shape of the ferroelectric-ferroelastic domains may act as important limiting factors in the formation of the Néel-type skyrmion lattice emerging below TC = 13 K, the characteristics of polar domains in GaV4S8 have not been studied yet. Here, we report on the inspection of the local-scale ferroelectric domain distribution in rhombohedral GaV4S8 using low-temperature piezoresponse force microscopy. We observed mechanically and electrically compatible lamellar domain patterns, where the lamellae are aligned parallel to the (100)-type planes with a typical spacing between 100 nm–1.2 μm. Since the magnetic pattern, imaged by atomic force microscopy using a magnetically coated tip, abruptly changes at the domain boundaries, we expect that the control of ferroelectric domain size in polar skyrmion hosts can be exploited for the spatial confinement and manipulation of Néel-type skyrmions.

Nano-spectroscopy in the terahertz frequency range remains challenging despite recent technological progress in developing both THz emitter sources and near-field optical microscopy (SNOM). Here, we combine scattering-type SNOM with a free-electron laser light source, to tune into the 1.3–8.5 THz range. A significant portion of this range, namely, the frequencies above ∼3 THz, is not covered by previously reported near-field microscopy systems. However, it constitutes an indispensable regime where many elementary processes in solids including collective lattice excitations, charge, and spin transport occur. Our approach of nano-spectroscopy and nano-imaging provides a versatile analysis of nanostructures as small as 50 nm, hence beating the optical diffraction limit by λ/4600.

We demonstrate a semiconductor based broadband near-field superlens in the mid-infrared regime. Here, the Drude response of a highly doped n-GaAs layer induces a resonant enhancement of evanescent waves accompanied by a significantly improved spatial resolution at radiation wavelengths around λ = 20 μm, adjustable by changing the doping concentration. In our experiments, gold stripes below the GaAs superlens are imaged with a λ/6 subwavelength resolution by an apertureless near-field optical microscope utilizing infrared radiation from a free-electron laser. The resonant behavior of the observed superlensing effect is in excellent agreement with simulations based on the Drude-Lorentz model. Our results demonstrate a rather simple superlens implementation for infrared nanospectroscopy.

Scattering scanning near-field optical microscopy (s-SNOM) has been established as an excellent tool to probe domains in ferroelectric crystals at room temperature. Here, we apply the s-SNOM possibilities to quantify low-temperature phase transitions in barium titanate single crystals by both temperature-dependent resonance spectroscopy and domain distribution imaging. The orthorhombic-to-tetragonal structural phase transition at 263 K manifests in a change of the spatial arrangement of ferroelectric domains as probed with a tunable free-electron laser. More intriguingly, the domain distribution unravels non-favored domain configurations upon sample recovery to room temperature as explainable by increased sample disorder. Ferroelectric domains and topographic influences are clearly deconvolved even at low temperatures, since complementing our s-SNOM nano-spectroscopy with piezoresponse force microscopy and topographic imaging using one and the same atomic force microscope and tip.