Related papers: Strain gradient induced polarization in SrTiO3 sin…
SrTiO3 is an incipient ferroelectric that is believed to exhibit a prototype displacive, soft mode ferroelectric transition when subjected to mechanical stress or alloying. We use high-angle annular dark-field imaging in scanning…
We use first principles density functional theory calculations to investigate the effect of biaxial strain in the low-temperature structural and ferroelectric properties of [111]-oriented SrTiO$_3$. We find that [111] biaxial strain,…
Interface effects on the ferroelectric behavior of PbTiO$_3$ ultrathin films deposited on SrTiO$_3$ substrate are investigated using an interatomic potential approach with parameters fitted to first-principles calculations. We find that the…
The influence of the flexoelectric and rotostriction coupling on the phase diagrams of ferroelastic-quantum paraelectric SrTiO3 films was studied using Landau-Ginzburg-Devonshire (LGD) theory. The phase diagrams in coordinates temperature -…
Modern electromechanical actuators and sensors rely on the piezoelectric effect that linearly couples strain and electric polarization. However, this effect is restricted to materials that lack inversion symmetry. In contrast, the…
Based on a first-principles based multiscale approach, we study the polarity (P) of ferroelastic twin walls in SrTiO$_3$. In addition to flexoelectricity, which was pointed out before, we identify two new mechanisms that crucially…
Flexoelectricity (coupling between polarization and strain gradients) is a property of all dielectric materials that has been theoretically known for decades, but it is only relatively recently that it has begun to attract experimental…
Ferroelectric materials are a class of dielectrics that exhibit spontaneous polarization which can be reversed under an external electric field. The emergence of ferroelectric order in incipient ferroelectrics is a topic of considerable…
Fluctuating orders in solids are generally considered high-temperature precursors of broken symmetry phases. However, in some cases these fluctuations persist to zero temperature and prevent the emergence of long-range order, as for example…
A centrosymmetric stress cannot induce a polar response in centric materials, piezoelectricity is, for example, possible only in non-centrosymmetric structures. An exception is meta-materials with shape asymmetry, which may be polarized by…
Although rare, spontaneous breakdown of inversion symmetry sometimes occurs in a material which is metallic: these are commonly known as polar metals or ferroelectric metals. Their 'polarization', however, cannot be switched via an electric…
Proximity to phase transitions (PTs) is frequently responsible for the largest dielectric susceptibilities in ferroelectrics. The impracticality of using temperature as a control parameter to reach those large responses has motivated the…
We consider theoretically the influence of the flexoelectric coupling on the spatial distribution and temperature behavior of spontaneous polarization for several types of stable domain structure in thin ferroelectric films, such as stripe…
Artificial PbTiO$_{3}$/SrTiO$_{3}$ superlattices were constructed using off-axis RF magnetron sputtering. X-ray diffraction and piezoelectric atomic force microscopy were used to study the evolution of the ferroelectric polarization as the…
Theoretical analysis based on the Landau-Ginzburg-Devonshire (LGD) theory is used to show that the joint action of flexoelectric effect and rotostriction leads to a large spontaneous in-plane polarization (~ 1-5 muC/cm2) and pyroelectric…
A single crystal of lead-zirconate-titanate (PZT), composition Pb(Zr0.80Ti0.20)O3, was studied by polarized-Raman scattering as a function of temperature. Raman spectra reveal that the local structure deviates from the average structure in…
It has been well known that flexoelectricity can be exploited to generate an analogous piezoelectric response in non-piezoelectric materials. For the direct flexoelectric effect, the induced electric polarization is linearly proportional to…
The influence of flexoelectric coupling on the internal structure of neutral domain walls in tetragonal phase of perovskite ferroelectrics is studied. The effect is shown to lower the symmetry of 180-degree walls which are oblique with…
We investigate the variation of the spontaneous ferroelectric polarization with epitaxial strain for BaTiO$_3$, PbTiO$_3$, LiNbO$_3$, and BiFeO$_3$ using first principles calculations. We find that while the strain dependence of the…
The propagation front of a crack generates large strain gradients and it is therefore a strong source of gradient-induced polarization (flexoelectricity). Herein, we demonstrate that, in piezoelectric materials, a consequence of…