Mechanical-force-induced non-local collective ferroelastic switching in epitaxial lead-titanate thin films

Xiaoyan Lu; Zuhuang Chen; Ye Cao; Yunlong Tang; Ruijuan Xu; Sahar Saremi; Zhan Zhang; Lu You; Yongqi Dong; Sujit Das; Hangbo Zhang; Limei Zheng; Huaping Wu; Weiming Lv; Guoqiang Xie; Xingjun Liu; Jiangyu Li; Lang Chen; Long-Qing Chen; Wenwu Cao; Lane W Martin

doi:10.1038/s41467-019-11825-2

Mechanical-force-induced non-local collective ferroelastic switching in epitaxial lead-titanate thin films

Nat Commun. 2019 Sep 2;10(1):3951. doi: 10.1038/s41467-019-11825-2.

Authors

Xiaoyan Lu¹, Zuhuang Chen², Ye Cao³, Yunlong Tang⁴, Ruijuan Xu⁴, Sahar Saremi⁴, Zhan Zhang⁵, Lu You⁶, Yongqi Dong⁵, Sujit Das⁴, Hangbo Zhang⁷, Limei Zheng⁸, Huaping Wu⁹, Weiming Lv⁸, Guoqiang Xie¹⁰, Xingjun Liu¹⁰, Jiangyu Li¹¹, Lang Chen¹², Long-Qing Chen¹³, Wenwu Cao^{8

14}, Lane W Martin^{15

16}

Affiliations

¹ School of Civil Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, 150001, China. luxy@hit.edu.cn.
² School of Materials Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, 518055, China. zuhuang@hit.edu.cn.
³ Departments of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Texas at Arlington, Arlington, TX, 76019, USA.
⁴ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA.
⁵ X-ray Science Division, Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, IL, 60439, USA.
⁶ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 639798, Singapore.
⁷ School of Civil Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, 150001, China.
⁸ Condensed Matter Science and Technology Institute, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, 150080, China.
⁹ Key Laboratory of E&M (Zhejiang University of Technology), Ministry of Education & Zhejiang Province, Hangzhou, 310014, China.
¹⁰ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, 518055, China.
¹¹ Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, WA, 98195-2600, USA.
¹² Department of Physics, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, 518055, China.
¹³ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA.
¹⁴ Department of Mathematics and Materials Research Institute, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA.
¹⁵ Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA. lwmartin@berkeley.edu.
¹⁶ Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, 94720, USA. lwmartin@berkeley.edu.

Abstract

Ferroelastic switching in ferroelectric/multiferroic oxides plays a crucial role in determining their dielectric, piezoelectric, and magnetoelectric properties. In thin films of these materials, however, substrate clamping is generally thought to limit the electric-field- or mechanical-force-driven responses to the local scale. Here, we report mechanical-force-induced large-area, non-local, collective ferroelastic domain switching in PbTiO₃ epitaxial thin films by tuning the misfit-strain to be near a phase boundary wherein c/a and a₁/a₂ nanodomains coexist. Phenomenological models suggest that the collective, c-a-c-a ferroelastic switching arises from the small potential barrier between the degenerate domain structures, and the large anisotropy of a and c domains, which collectively generates much larger response and large-area domain propagation. Large-area, non-local response under small stimuli, unlike traditional local response to external field, provides an opportunity of unique response to local stimuli, which has potential for use in high-sensitivity pressure sensors and switches.