Comment on: 'Depolarization corrections to the coercive field in thin-film ferroelectrics'

Abstract

The Letter by Dawber et al. [J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 15 L393 (2003)] notes that incomplete screening in the electrodes of a ferroelectric capacitor can result in an underestimate for the true coercive field in films of nanometer thickness. We show that their estimate of the magnitude of this correction it too large in the case of ferroelectric copolymer Langmuir-Blodgett films and, as a result, invalidates the claim that finite-size scaling of the ferroelectric coercive field is evident in films thinner than 15 nm.