Giant polarization in super-tetragonal thin films through interphase strain

Linxing Zhang; Jun Chen; Longlong Fan; Oswaldo Diéguez; Jiangli Cao; Zhao Pan; Yilin Wang; Jinguo Wang; Moon Kim; Shiqing Deng; Jiaou Wang; Huanhua Wang; Jinxia Deng; Ranbo Yu; James F Scott; Xianran Xing

doi:10.1126/science.aan2433

Giant polarization in super-tetragonal thin films through interphase strain

Science. 2018 Aug 3;361(6401):494-497. doi: 10.1126/science.aan2433.

Authors

Linxing Zhang¹, Jun Chen^{2

3}, Longlong Fan¹, Oswaldo Diéguez⁴, Jiangli Cao⁵, Zhao Pan¹, Yilin Wang¹, Jinguo Wang⁶, Moon Kim⁶, Shiqing Deng⁷, Jiaou Wang⁸, Huanhua Wang⁸, Jinxia Deng¹, Ranbo Yu¹, James F Scott⁹, Xianran Xing^{2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Physical Chemistry, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China.
² Department of Physical Chemistry, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China. [email protected] [email protected].
³ State Key Laboratory for Advanced Metals and Materials, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China.
⁴ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, The Raymond and Beverly Sackler Center for Computational Molecular and Materials Science, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 6997801, Israel.
⁵ Institute of Advanced Materials and Technology, University of Science and Technology Beijing, Beijing 100083, China.
⁶ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, TX 75080, USA.
⁷ National Center for Electron Microscopy in Beijing, School of Materials Science and Engineering, The State Key Laboratory of New Ceramics and Fine Processing, Key Laboratory of Advanced Materials (MOE), Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
⁸ Institute of High Energy Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
⁹ School of Chemistry and School of Physics, St Andrews University, St Andrews, Fife KY16 9ST, Scotland.

PMID: 30072536
DOI: 10.1126/science.aan2433

Abstract

Strain engineering has emerged as a powerful tool to enhance the performance of known functional materials. Here we demonstrate a general and practical method to obtain super-tetragonality and giant polarization using interphase strain. We use this method to create an out-of-plane-to-in-plane lattice parameter ratio of 1.238 in epitaxial composite thin films of tetragonal lead titanate (PbTiO₃), compared to 1.065 in bulk. These thin films with super-tetragonal structure possess a giant remanent polarization, 236.3 microcoulombs per square centimeter, which is almost twice the value of known ferroelectrics. The super-tetragonal phase is stable up to 725°C, compared to the bulk transition temperature of 490°C. The interphase-strain approach could enhance the physical properties of other functional materials.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't