Related papers: The origins of electromechanical indentation size …
The origin of "giant" flexoelectricity, orders of magnitude larger than theoretically predicted, yet frequently observed, is under intense scrutiny. There is mounting evidence correlating giant flexoelectric-like effects with parasitic…
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…
Flexoelectricity is a universal effect that generates electric polarization due to broken inversion symmetry caused by local strain gradient. The large strain gradient at nanoscale makes flexo-electric effects, especially in nanoscopic…
We report on nanoscale strain gradients in ferroelectric HoMnO3 epitaxial thin films, resulting in a giant flexoelectric effect. Using grazing-incidence in-plane X-ray diffraction, we measured strain gradients in the films, which were 6 or…
Multifunctional oxides are promising materials because of their fundamental physical properties as well as their potential in applications1. Among these materials, multiferroics exhibiting ferroelectricity and magnetism are good candidates…
The size effect in ferroelectrics is treated as a competition between the geometrical symmetry of the ferroelectric sample and its crystalline symmetry. The manifestation of this competition is shown to be polarization rotation, which is…
We have measured the bending-induced polarization of Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-PbTiO3 single crystals with compositions at the relaxor-ferroelectric phase boundary. The crystals display very large flexoelectricity, with flexocoupling coefficients an…
In this work we analyze the finite-size effects on the structural properties and on the polarization of the rhombohedral phase of HfO$_2$ subjected to a biaxial compressive strain. We show how the presence of surface charges affects the…
In this paper, a consistent theory is developed for size-dependent piezoelectricity in dielectric solids. This theory shows that electric polarization can be generated as the result of coupling to the mean curvature tensor, unlike previous…
Sliding ferroelectrics, which exhibit out-of-plane polarization arising from specific stacking rather than conventional ionic displacements, are new types of ferroelectrics whose underdeveloped physics needs to be explored. Here, we…
Flexoelectricity describes the coupling between polarization and strain/stress gradients in insulating crystals. In this paper, using the Landau-Ginsburg-Devonshire phenomenological approach, we found that flexoelectricity could increase…
Here the recently developed size-dependent piezoelectricity and the strain gradient theory of flexoelectricity are compared. In the course of this investigation, the strain gradient theory of flexoelectricity is shown to violate fundamental…
The coupling between strain gradients and polarization, known as flexoelectricity, offers a new mechanism to control the functionality of dielectric materials. However, for the effect to be practically attractive, dynamic control of the…
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…
We investigate the electrostrictive response across a ferroelectric phase transition from first-principles calculations and refute the prevailing view of constant electrostriction across the ferroelectric phase boundary. We take as a case…
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…
Electric field dependent mechanical properties of relaxor ferroelectric material Pb(Mn1/3Nb2/3)O3-PbTiO3 are investigated with the nanoindentation technique. Giant electric-field-tunable apparent elastic modulus (up to -39%), hardness (-9%…
In this paper we study the surface effects that bulk flexoelectric models in finite samples exhibit. We first show that when the body is infinite, flexoelectric materials do not exhibit electromechanical response under homogeneous loading.…
Soft robotics requires materials that are capable of large deformation and amenable to actuation with external stimuli such as electric fields. Energy harvesting, biomedical devices, flexible electronics and sensors are some other…
Upon application of a uniform strain, internal sub-lattice shifts within the unit cell of a non-centrosymmetric dielectric crystal result in the appearance of a net dipole moment: a phenomenon well known as piezoelectricity. A macroscopic…