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Conductive ferroelectric domain walls have been the focus of intensive studies in nanoelectronics due to their promising electronic properties. Here, both head-to-head and tail-to-tail domain walls with a large inclination angle ([Formula: see text]90[Formula: see text]) were fabricated on the surface of [Formula: see text]-cut nominally pure congruent lithium niobate crystals. Our results show that both types of domain walls are conductive, while the conductivity of the head-to-head domain walls is larger than that of the tail-to-tail domain walls by about two orders of magnitude at the same inclination angle of domain walls.

We reported on a graphical domain engineering technique with the capability to fabricate macroscale domain structures with nanoscale spatial resolution in non-polar-cut lithium niobate thin film on insulators through the biased probe tip of scanning atomic force microscopy. It was found that the domain writing process is asymmetric with respect to the spontaneous polarization Ps even though the tip-induced poling field is mirror-symmetric. Various domain structures, with a dimension larger than millimeters while consisting of nanoscale domain elements and with arbitrary domain-wall inclination angle with respect to Ps, were designed graphically and then written directly into non-polar-cut lithium niobate crystals. As a proof of principle demonstration, periodically poled x-cut lithium niobate thin film on insulators with a period of 600 nm, a depth of 460 nm and a length of ∼ 1 mm was fabricated. This technique could be useful for device applications in integrated optics and opto-electronics and domain-wall nanoelectronics based on lithium niobate on insulator.