Flexoelectricity-Enhanced Photovoltaic Effect in Self-Polarized Flexible PZT Nanowire Array Devices

Bowen Zhang; Dan Tan; Xiaodan Cao; Junyuan Tian; Yonggui Wang; Jinxi Zhang; Zhonglin Wang; Kailiang Ren

doi:10.1021/acsnano.2c00450

Flexoelectricity-Enhanced Photovoltaic Effect in Self-Polarized Flexible PZT Nanowire Array Devices

ACS Nano. 2022 May 24;16(5):7834-7847. doi: 10.1021/acsnano.2c00450. Epub 2022 May 9.

Authors

Bowen Zhang^{1

2}, Dan Tan³, Xiaodan Cao^{1

4}, Junyuan Tian¹, Yonggui Wang^{1

4}, Jinxi Zhang¹, Zhonglin Wang^{1

5}, Kailiang Ren^{1

4}

Affiliations

¹ Beijing Key Laboratory of Micro-nano Energy and Sensors, CAS Center for Excellence in Nanoscience, Beijing Institute of Nanoenergy and Nanosystems, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100083, P.R. China.
² School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing 100049, P.R. China.
³ School of Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, Xidian University, Xi'an 710126, P.R. China.
⁴ Center on Nanoenergy Research, School of Physical Science and Technology Guangxi University, Nanning, Guangxi 530004, P.R. China.
⁵ School of Material Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332, United States.

PMID: 35533408
DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.2c00450

Abstract

In this investigation, we report the flexoelectricity-enhanced photovoltaic (FPV) effect in a flexible Pb(Zr_0.52Ti_0.48)O₃ nanowire (PZT NW) array/PDMS (polydimethylsiloxane) nanocomposite. The simulation result of density functional theory (DFT) indicated that the FPV effect in PZT NWs can be greatly affected by the interactions of the strain gradients with the internal field generated by self-polarization. We found that when the nanocomposite film was curved down, the photovoltaic current of the aligned PZT-NW/PDMS composite increased by 84.6-fold and 27.6-fold compared with the PZT-nanoparticles/PDMS and randomly aligned PZT-NW/PDMS nanocomposites at the same curvature, respectively. This is mainly ascribed to the increased flexoelectricity in the aligned PZT-NW/PDMS nanocomposite. This study will contribute to a full understanding of the influence of nanoparticle shape on the flexophotovoltaic effect of nanocomposites. It will have potential use in nanocomposites for the study of the FPV effect and associated applications.

Keywords: Ferroelectric memory; Flexoelectric effect; Flexoelectricity-enhanced photovoltaic effect; PZT Nanowire array; PZT/PDMS nanocomposites.