Electron-Polarization Coupling in Superconductor-Ferroelectric Superlattices

We present a phenomenological model of periodic ferroelectric-superconductor (FE-S) heterostructures containing two alternating ferroelectric and superconducting layers. The interaction at the FE-S contacts is described as a coupling of the local carrier density of the superconductor with the spontaneous ferroelectric polarization near the FE-S interface. We obtain a stable symmetric domain-type phase exhibiting a contact-induced polarization and the ferroelectric domain structure at temperatures above the bulk ferroelectric transition temperature. With an increasing coupling energy, we find the appearance of the ferroelectric phase coexisting with the suppressed superconductivity in the S-film. The system is analyzed for different thicknesses of the FE- and S-films demonstrating the dramatic change of the topology of the phase diagrams with a variation of the layers thickness. The results are expected to shed light on the processes occurring in high-temperature superconducting films grown on perovskite alloy-substrates exhibiting ferroelectric properties at lower temperatures.