Abstract
Field confinement at the junction between a biased scanning probe microscope’s (SPM) tip and solid surface enables local probing of various bias-induced transformations such as polarization switching, ionic motion, or electrochemical reactions to name a few. The nanoscale size of the biased region is smaller or comparable to features like grain boundaries and dislocations, potentially allows for the study of kinetics and thermodynamics at the level of a single defect. In contrast to classical statistically averaged approaches, this allows one to link structure to functionality and deterministically decipher associated mesoscopic and atomistic mechanisms. Furthermore, this type of information can serve as a fingerprint of local material functionality, allowing for local recognition imaging. Here, current progress in multidimensional SPM techniques based on band-excitation time and voltage spectroscopies is illustrated, including discussions on data acquisition, dimensionality reduction, and visualization along with future challenges and opportunities for the field.
