Related papers: Strain gradient induced polarization in SrTiO3 sin…
The wealth of complex polar topologies recently found in nanoscale ferroelectrics result from a delicate balance between the materials intrinsic tendency to develop a homogeneous polarization and the electric and mechanic boundary…
We report first-principle atomistic simulations on the effect of local strain gradients on the nanoscale domain morphology of free-standing PbTiO$_3$ ultrathin films. First, the ferroelectric properties of free films at the atomic level are…
The sensitivity of ferroelectric domain walls to external stimuli makes them functional entities in nanoelectronic devices. Specifically, optically driven domain reconfiguration with in-plane polarization is advantageous and thus highly…
Ferroelastic materials (materials with switchable spontaneous strain) often are centrosymmetric, but their domain walls are always polar, as their internal strain gradients cause polarization via flexoelectricity. This polarization is…
Functional devices with ultrathin ferroelectric layers have been attracted as a promising candidate for next-generation memory and logic device applications. Using the ultrathin ferroelectric layers, particularly approaching the…
The elastic response of BaTiO$_3$ single crystals during electric field cycling at room temperature has been studied using in-situ Resonant Ultrasound Spectroscopy (RUS), which allows monitoring of both the elastic and anelastic changes…
Metals exhibit a size-dependent hardening when subject to indentation. Mechanisms for this phenomenon have been intensely researched in recent times. Does such a size-effect also exist in the electromechanical behavior of…
Since conduction electrons of a metal screen effectively the local electric dipole moments, it was widely believed that the ferroelectric-like distortion cannot occur in metals. Recently, metallic LiOsO3, was discovered to be the first…
Defect engineering is an effective and powerful tool to control existing material properties and create completely new ones, which are symmetry-forbidden in a defect-free crystal. This letter reports on the creation of piezoelectrically…
The spontaneous polarization of epitaxial BaTiO$_3$/SrTiO$_3$ superlattices is studied as a function of composition using first-principles density functional theory within the local density approximation. With the in-plane lattice parameter…
In epitaxially strained ferroelectric thin films and superlattices, the ferroelectric transition temperature can lie above the growth temperature. Ferroelectric polarization and domains should then evolve during the growth of a sample, and…
Electrostriction is an important material property that characterizes how strain changes with the development of polarization inside a material. We show that \textit{ab initio }techniques developed in recent years can be exploited to…
Modulation of the grain boundary properties in thermoelectric materials that have thermally activated electrical conductivity is crucial in order to achieve high performance at low temperatures. In this work, we show directly that the…
The consideration of size-induced ferroelectric-paraelectric phase transition for conventional and incipient ferroelectrics thin films with perovskite structure was carried out in phenomenological theory framework of…
Epitaxial strain is a powerful means to engineer emergent phenomena in thin films and heterostructures. Here, we demonstrate that KTaO3, a cubic perovskite in bulk form, can be epitaxially strained into a highly tunable ferroelectric. KTaO3…
We use density-functional theory with the local-density approximation to study the structural and ferroelectric properties of SrTiO$_3$ under misfit strains. Both the antiferrodistortive (AFD) and ferroelectric (FE) instabilities are…
The recent observation of a ferroelectric-like structural transition in metallic LiOsO$_3$ has generated a flurry of interest in the properties of polar metals. Such materials are thought to be rare because free electrons screen out the…
We predict a large in-plane polarization response to bending in a broad class of trigonal two-dimensional crystals. We define and compute the relevant flexoelectric coefficients from first principles as linear-response properties of the…
The direction of ferroelectric polarization is prescribed by the symmetry of the crystal structure. Therefore, rotation of the polarization direction is largely limited, despite the opportunity it offers in understanding important…
Deterministic polarization reversal in ferroelectric and multiferroic films is critical for their exploitation in nanoelectronic devices. While ferroelectricity has been studied for nearly a century, major discrepancies in the reported…