Related papers: A textured polar phase in strained SrTiO3
Strontium titanate is an incipient ferroelectric in which superconductivity emerges at exceptionally low doping levels. Remarkably, stabilizing the polar phase through strain or chemical substitution has been shown to significantly enhance…
Much of the focus of modern condensed matter physics concerns control of quantum phases with examples that include flat band superconductivity in graphene bilayers, the interplay of magnetism and ferroelectricity, and induction of…
We demonstrate an approach for calculating temperature-dependent quantum and anharmonic effects with beyond density-functional theory accuracy. By combining machine-learned potentials and the stochastic self-consistent harmonic…
Strontium titanate is a classic quantum paraelectric oxide material that has been widely studied in bulk and thin films. It exhibits a well-known cubic-to-tetragonal antiferrodistortive phase transition at 105 K, characterized by the…
Strontium titanate (SrTiO$_3$), famously described by Nobel laureate K. A. M\"uller as the "drosophila of solid-state physics", has been extensively investigated over the last seventy five years for its intricate coupling of structural,…
Various new phenomena emerge in quantum materials under elastic deformations, such as hydrostatic or uniaxial stresses. In particular, using uniaxial strain or stress can help to tune or uncover specific structural or electronic orders in…
SrTiO3 is an incipient ferroelectric that is believed to exhibit a prototype displacive, soft mode ferroelectric transition when subjected to mechanical stress or alloying. We use high-angle annular dark-field imaging in scanning…
We report a molecular dynamics study of ab initio quality of the ferroelectric phase transition in crystalline PbTiO3. We model anharmonicity accurately in terms of potential energy and polarization surfaces trained on density functional…
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…
Superconducting domes, ubiquitous across a variety of quantum materials, are often understood as a window favorite for pairing opened by the fluctuations of competing orders. Yet, a quantitative understanding of how such a window closes is…
"Hidden phases" are metastable collective states of matter that are typically not accessible on equilibrium phase diagrams. These phases can host exotic properties in otherwise conventional materials and hence may enable novel functionality…
The interplay of electronic and structural degrees of freedom is a prominent feature of many quantum materials and of particular interest in systems with strong ferroelectric fluctuations, such as SrTiO$_3$ (STO) and KTaO$_3$ (KTO). Both…
The properties of quantum materials are commonly tuned using experimental variables such as pressure, magnetic field and doping. Here we explore a different approach: irreversible, plastic deformation of single crystals. We show for the…
Superconducting strontium titanate (STO) is in the spotlight as a low carrier concentration semiconductor in proximity to polar order. Its superconducting pairing mechanism poses an open fundamental challenge, which may be resolved by…
The notion of a simple ordered state implies homogeneity. If the order is established by a broken symmetry, elementary Landau theory of phase transitions shows that only one symmetry mode describes this state. Precisely at points of phase…
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…
Monodispersed strontium titanate nanoparticles were prepared and studied in detail. It is found that ~10 nm as-prepared stoichiometric nanoparticles are in a polar structural state (with possibly ferroelectric properties) over a broad…
Polar topologies, such as vortex and skyrmion, have attracted significant interest due to their unique physical properties and promising applications in high-density memory devices. Currently, most polar vortices are observed in…
Ferroelectric materials display exotic polarization textures at the nanoscale that could be used to improve the energetic efficiency of electronic components. The vast majority of studies were conducted in two dimensions on thin films, that…
Fluctuating orders in solids are generally considered high-temperature precursors of broken symmetry phases. However, in some cases these fluctuations persist to zero temperature and prevent the emergence of long-range order, as for example…