Related papers: Defect driven flexo-chemical coupling in thin ferr…
When a thin film is deposited on an incompatible elastic substrate, the film develops an elastic mismatch strain, causing the film-substrate system to bend. Stoney's equation relates the curvature of the bent film-substrate system with the…
Ferroelectric (FE) size effects against the scaling law were reported recently in ultrathin group-IV monochalcogenides, and extrinsic effects (e.g. defects and lattice strains) were often resorted to. Via first-principles based…
The role of defects in solids of mixed ionic-covalent bonds such as ferroelectric oxides is complex. Current understanding of defects on ferroelectric properties at the single-defect level remains mostly at the empirical level, and the…
The structure of 180-degree uncharged rotational domain wall in a multiaxial ferroelectric film is studied within the framework of analytical Landau-Ginzburg-Devonshire (LGD) approach. The Finite Element Modelling (FEM) is used to solve…
The ferroelectric properties of disorder Pb(Zr$_{0.5}$Ti$_{0.5}$)O$_{3}$ thin films are investigated with Monte Carlo simulations on the basis of a first-principles-derived Hamitonian. It is found that there exists a critical thickness of…
The coupling between antiferrodistortion (AFD) and ferroelectric (FE) polarization, universal for all tilted perovskite multiferroics, is known to strongly correlate with domain wall functionalities in the materials. The intrinsic…
Within the framework of the phenomenological Ginzburg-Landau theory influence of metallic electrodes on the properties of thin ferroelectric films is considered. The contribution of the metallic electrodes with different screening length of…
A large electric field is typically present in anodic or passive oxide films. Stresses induced by such a large electric field are critical in understanding the breakdown mechanism of thin oxide films and improving their corrosion…
After the discovery of ferroelectricity in HfO$_2$ based thin films a decade ago, ferroelectric Hf$_{0.5}$Zr$_{0.5}$O$_2$ (HZO) thin films are frequently being utilized in the CMOS (Complementary Metal- Oxide Semiconductor) and logic…
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…
In the framework of Landau--Ginzburg--Devonshire (LGD) phenomenological theory, the influence of misfit strains, surface energy, and finite-size effects on phase diagrams, polar properties, and hysteresis loops has been calculated for…
SrTiO$_3$ is an incipient ferroelectric on the verge of a polar instability, which is avoided at low temperatures by quantum fluctuations. Within this unusual quantum paraelectric phase, superconductivity persists despite extremely dilute…
Pressure-induced polarization switching in ferroelectric thin films has emerged as a powerful method for domain patterning, allowing to create predefined domain patterns on free surfaces and under thin conductive top electrodes. However,…
X-ray absorption near-edge and grazing incidence X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy are employed to investigate the electronic structure of ZnFe$_{2}$O$_{4}$ thin films. The spectroscopy techniques are used to determine the non-equilibrium…
The interplay between electrochemical surface charges and bulk ferroelectricity in thin films gives rise to a continuum of coupled ferro-ionic states. These states are exquisitely sensitive to chemical and electric conditions at the…
Surface and ferroelectric properties of PbTiO$_3$ thin films are investigated using an interatomic potential approach with parameters computed from first-principles calculations. We show that a model developed for the bulk describes…
The temperature-dependent polarization of SrTiO_3 thin films is investigated using confocal scanning optical microscopy. A homogeneous out-of-plane and inhomogeneous in-plane ferroelectric phase are identified from images of the linear…
Atomic force microscopy was used to investigate ferroelectric switching and nanoscale domain dynamics in epitaxial PbZr0.2Ti0.8O3 thin films. Measurements of the writing time dependence of domain size reveal a two-step process in which…
Engraving trenches on the surfaces of ultrathin ferroelectric (FE) films and superlattices promises control over the orientation and direction of FE domain walls (DWs). Through exploiting the phenomenon of DW-surface trench (ST) parallel…
Fatigue failure in ferroelectrics has been intensively investigated in the past few decades. Most of the mechanisms discussed for ferroelectric fatigue have been built on the "hypothesis of variation in charged defects", which however are…