Related papers: Giant strain gradient elasticity in SrTiO3 membran…
The increasing availability of a variety of two-dimensional materials has generated enormous growth in the field of nanoengineering and nanomechanics. Recent developments in thin film synthesis have enabled the fabrication of freestanding…
Mechanical displacement in commonly used piezoelectric materials is typically restricted to linear or biaxial in nature and to a few percent of the material dimensions. Here, we show that free-standing BaTiO$_3$ membranes exhibit…
Recent realizations of ultrathin freestanding perovskite oxides offer a unique platform to probe novel properties in two-dimensional oxides. Here, we observed a giant flexoelectric response in freestanding BiFeO3 and SrTiO3 in their bent…
Flexoelectricity is a type of ubiquitous and prominent electromechanical coupling, pertaining to the response of electrical polarization to mechanical strain gradients while not restricted to the symmetry of materials. However, large…
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%…
First-principles density functional calculations show that the $\textrm{SrRuO}_{3}/\textrm{PbTiO}_{3}/\textrm{SrRuO}_{3}$ multiferroic junction with asymmetric (RuO$_{2}$/PbO and TiO$_{2}$/SrO) interfaces has a large ferroelectric…
The polarization response of a material to a strain gradient, known as flexoelectricity, holds great promise for novel electromechanical applications. Despite considerable recent progress, however, the effect remains poorly understood. From…
Flexoelectricity refers to a linear coupling between the electric polarization and the strain gradient, such as bending or asymmetric compression. This effect is enhanced in nano-scale structures, where grain boundaries or dislocation cores…
EuTiO3 (ETO) is a well-known complex oxide mainly investigated for its magnetic properties and its incipient ferro-electricity. In this work, we demonstrate the realization of suspended micro-mechanical structures, such as cantilevers and…
Freestanding ferroelectric membranes have emerged as a versatile tool for strain engineering, enabling the exploration of ferroelectric properties beyond traditional epitaxy. The resulting ferroelectric domain patterns stem from the balance…
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…
Flexoelectricity is a universal electromechanical coupling effect whereby all dielectric materials polarize in response to strain gradients. In particular, nanoscale flexoelectricity promises exotic phenomena and functions, but reliable…
Flexoelectric effect is the coupling between strain, polarization and their gradients, which are prominent at the nanoscale. Although this effect is important to understand nanostructures, such as domain walls in ferroelectrics, its…
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…
Advances in complex oxide heteroepitaxy have highlighted the enormous potential of utilizing strain engineering via lattice mismatch to control ferroelectricity in thin-film heterostructures. This approach, however, lacks the ability to…
Flexoelectricity, a coupling between strain gradients and electric polarization, has attracted significant interest due to its critical role in enhanced effects at small scales and its applicability across a diverse range of materials.…
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…
The fracture strength of ZnO nanowires vertically grown on sapphire substrates was measured in tensile and bending experiments. Nanowires with diameters between 60 and 310 nm and a typical length of 2 um were manipulated with an atomic…
The burgeoning fields of spintronics and topological electronics require materials possessing a unique combination of properties: ferromagnetism, metallicity, and chemical stability. SrRuO3 (SRO) stands out as a compelling candidate due to…
Torsional oscillator experiments show evidence of mass decoupling in solid 4He. This decoupling is amplitude dependent, suggesting a critical velocity for supersolidity. We observe similar behavior in the elastic shear modulus. By measuring…