Related papers: Electrostatic engineering of strained ferroelectri…
The design of correlated materials challenges researchers to combine the maturing, high throughput framework of DFT-based materials design with the rapidly-developing first-principles theory for correlated electron systems. We review the…
Ferroelectric nematic (NF) liquid crystals combine liquid-like fluidity and orientational order of conventional nematics with macroscopic electric polarization comparable in magnitude to solid state ferroelectric materials. Here, we present…
Piezoresistivity is the most commonly used sensing principle in cement-based smart composites for strain-monitoring applications. Nonetheless, the need for external electric power to conduct electrical resistivity measurements restricts the…
Strain and domain engineering offer powerful routes to control phase and domain stability in ferroelectric thin films. While most studies have focused on (100)-oriented growth, the impact of lower-symmetry orientations remains…
We study the electrical behavior of multiferroic BiFeO$_3$ by means of first-principles calculations. We do so by constraining a specific component of the electric displacement field along a variety of structural paths, and by monitoring…
We develop a general and unified first-principles theory of piezoelectric and flexoelectric tensor, formulated in such a way that the tensor elements can be computed directly in the context of density-functional calculations, including…
We used first-principles calculations to investigate the existence and origin of the ferroelectric in- stability in the ABF3 fluoro-perovskites. We find that many fluoro-perovskites have a ferroelectric instability in their high symmetry…
First-principles quasi-harmonic calculations play a very important role in mineral physics because they can accurately predict the structure and thermodynamic properties of materials at pressure and temperature conditions that are still…
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…
We have developed first-principles models, based on a general parametrization of the full potential-energy surface, to investigate the lattice-dynamical properties of perovskite oxides. We discuss the application of our method to prototypic…
It has been recently reported (S. Lee et al., Nature Materials 12, 392, 2013) that superlattices where layers of the 8% Co-doped BaFe2As2 superconducting pnictide are intercalated with non superconducting ultrathin layers of either SrTiO3…
Motivated by an experimental report of iridate superlattices, we performed first-principle electronic structure calculations for SrIrO$_3$/SrTiO$_3$. Heterostructuring causes SrIrO$_3$ to become Sr$_2$IrO$_4$-like, and the system has the…
The oxide heterostructure [(YFeO$_3$)$_5$(LaFeO$_3$)$_5$]$_{40}$, which is magnetically ordered and piezoelectric at room temperature, has been constructed from two weak ferromagnetic AFeO$_3$ perovskites with different A cations using…
Understanding the non-equilibrium behavior of stainless steel under extreme electronic excitation remains a critical challenge for laser processing and radiation science. We employ a hybrid framework integrating density-functional tight…
We report first-principles calculations on the coupling between epitaxial strain, polarization, and oxygen octahedra rotations in monodomain (PbTiO$_{3}$)$_{n}$/(SrTiO$_{3}$)$_{n}$ superlattices. We show how the interplay between (i) the…
Low-dimensional metal halide perovskites provide exciting opportunities to fabricate new semiconductor materials. Semiconductor technology relies on electronic heterojunctions, and cost-efficient and flexible approaches to realize…
Ferroelectric devices use their electric polarization ferroic order as the switching and storage physical quantity for memory applications. However, additional built-in physical quantities and memory paradigms are requested for…
In insulating materials with ordered magnetic spiral phases, ferroelectricity can emerge due to the breaking of inversion symmetry. This property is of both fundamental and practical interest, in particular with a view to exploiting it in…
The metastable nature of the ferroelectric phase of HfO$_2$ is a significant impediment to its industrial application as a functional ferroelectric material. In fact, no polar phases exist in the bulk phase diagram of HfO$_2$, which shows a…
Polar metals characterized by the simultaneous coexistence of ferroelectric distortions and metallicity have attracted tremendous attention. Developing such materials at low dimensions remains challenging since both conducting electrons and…