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Clamping enables enhanced electromechanical responses in antiferroelectric thin films
Journal article   Peer reviewed

Clamping enables enhanced electromechanical responses in antiferroelectric thin films

Hao Pan, Menglin Zhu, Ella Banyas, Louis Alaerts, Megha Acharya, Hongrui Zhang, Jiyeob Kim, Xianzhe Chen, Xiaoxi Huang, Michael Xu, …
Nature materials
23 May 2024
PMID: 38783106
url
https://escholarship.org/content/qt5b04c725/qt5b04c725.pdfView
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Abstract

Thin-film materials with large electromechanical responses are fundamental enablers of next-generation micro-/nano-electromechanical applications. Conventional electromechanical materials (for example, ferroelectrics and relaxors), however, exhibit severely degraded responses when scaled down to submicrometre-thick films due to substrate constraints (clamping). This limitation is overcome, and substantial electromechanical responses in antiferroelectric thin films are achieved through an unconventional coupling of the field-induced antiferroelectric-to-ferroelectric phase transition and the substrate constraints. A detilting of the oxygen octahedra and lattice-volume expansion in all dimensions are observed commensurate with the phase transition using operando electron microscopy, such that the in-plane clamping further enhances the out-of-plane expansion, as rationalized using first-principles calculations. In turn, a non-traditional thickness scaling is realized wherein an electromechanical strain (1.7%) is produced from a model antiferroelectric PbZrO film that is just 100 nm thick. The high performance and understanding of the mechanism provide a promising pathway to develop high-performance micro-/nano-electromechanical systems.

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Collaboration types
Domestic collaboration
Web of Science research areas
Chemistry, Physical
Materials Science, Multidisciplinary
Physics, Applied
Physics, Condensed Matter
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