Related papers: On the possibility that PbZrO$_3$ not be antiferro…
Whereas ferroelectricity may vanish in ultra-thin ferroelectric films, it is expected to emerge in ultra-thin anti-ferroelectric films, sparking people's interest in using antiferroelectric materials as an alternative to ferroelectric ones…
We have studied ab initio the phase transition in PbZrO3, a perovskite oxide usually presented as the prototypic anti-ferroelectric material. Our work reveals the crucial role that anti-ferrodistortive modes -- involving concerted rotations…
Antiferroelectricity is a state of matter that has so far eluded a clear-cut definition. Even in the best-known material realization, PbZrO$_3$, the physical nature of the driving force towards an antipolar order has not been settled yet.…
In the archetypal antiferroelectric PbZrO3, antiparallel electric dipoles cancel each other, resulting in zero spontaneous polarisation at the macroscopic level. Yet in actual hysteresis loops, the cancellation is rarely perfect and some…
Size-driven transition of an antiferroelectric into a polar ferroelectric or ferrielectric state is a strongly debated issue from both experimental and theoretical perspectives. While critical thickness limits for such transitions have been…
Density functional calculations are performed to investigate the experimentally-reported field-induced phase transition in thin-film ZrO2 (J. Muller et al., Nano. Lett. 12, 4318). We find a small energy difference of ~ 1 meV/f.u. between…
Crystalline materials with broken inversion symmetry can exhibit a spontaneous electric polarization, which originates from a microscopic electric dipole moment. Long-range polar or anti-polar order of such permanent dipoles gives rise to…
Antiferroelectrics are antipolar materials which possess an electric field-induced phase transition to a polar, ferroelectric phase and offer significant potential for sensing/actuation and energy-storage applications. Known…
Lead zirconate titanate (PbZr1-xTixO3, PZT) exhibits excellent piezoelectric properties in the morphotropic phase boundary (MPB) region of its temperature-composition phase diagram. However, the microscopic origin of its high piezoelectric…
A novel atomistic effective Hamiltonian scheme, incorporating an original and simple bilinear energetic coupling, is developed and used to investigate the temperature dependent physical properties of the prototype antiferroelectric PbZrO3…
There have been a large number of papers on bismuth ferrite (BiFeO3) over the past few years, trying to exploit its room-temperature magnetoelectric multiferroic properties. Although these are attractive, BiFeO3 is not the ideal…
Flexoelectricity (coupling between polarization and strain gradients) is a property of all dielectric materials that has been theoretically known for decades, but it is only relatively recently that it has begun to attract experimental…
We examine the electronic properties of newly discovered "ferroelectric" metal LiOsO$_3$ combining density-functional and dynamical mean-field theories. We show that the material is close to a Mott transition and that electronic…
Lead-free antiferroelectric perovskite $\rm AgNbO_3$ is nowadays attracting extensive research interests due to its promising applications in energy storage. Although great progress has been made in optimizing the material performance,…
Bismuth ferrite is one of the most widely studied multiferroic materials because of its large ferroelectric polarisation coexisting with magnetic order at room temperature. Using density functional theory (DFT), we identify several…
Dielectric capacitors hold a tremendous advantage for energy storage due to their fast charge/discharge times and stability in comparison to batteries and supercapacitors. A key limitation to today's dielectric capacitors, however, is the…
The prototypical antiferroelectric PbZrO$_3$ has several unsettled questions, such as the nature of the antiferroelectric transition, possible intermediate phase and the microscopic origin of the Pbam ground state. Using first principles,…
AgNbO$_3$ is a lead-free perovskite with considerable potential for energy storage and optoelectronic applications, yet its low-temperature crystal structure has remained controversial. In this Letter, we revisit its low-energy structural…
A single crystal of lead-zirconate-titanate (PZT), composition Pb(Zr0.80Ti0.20)O3, was studied by polarized-Raman scattering as a function of temperature. Raman spectra reveal that the local structure deviates from the average structure in…
We present a study based on several advanced First-Principles methods, of the recently synthesized PbNiO3 [J. Am. Chem. Soc 133, 16920 (2011)], a rhombohedral antiferromagnetic insulator which crystallizes in the highly distorted R3c…