Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Understanding the crystal-field splitting and orbital polarization in noncentrosymmetric systems such as ferroelectric materials is fundamentally important. In this study, taking BaTiO3 as a representative material, we investigate titanium crystal-field splitting and orbital polarization in noncentrosymmetric TiO6 octahedra with resonant x-ray linear dichroism at the Ti L2,3 edge. The high-quality BaTiO3 thin films were deposited on DyScO3 (110) single crystal substrates in a layer-by-layer way by pulsed laser deposition. The reflection high-energy electron diffraction and element specific x-ray absorption spectroscopy were performed to characterize the structural and electronic properties of the films. In sharp contrast to conventional crystal-field splitting and orbital configuration (dxz/dyz