Room-temperature stabilizing strongly competing ferrielectric and antiferroelectric phases in PbZrO3 by strain-mediated phase separation

Ziyi Yu; Ningbo Fan; Zhengqian Fu; Biao He; Shiguang Yan; Henghui Cai; Xuefeng Chen; Linlin Zhang; Yuanyuan Zhang; Bin Xu; Genshui Wang; Fangfang Xu

doi:10.1038/s41467-024-47776-6

Room-temperature stabilizing strongly competing ferrielectric and antiferroelectric phases in PbZrO₃ by strain-mediated phase separation

Nat Commun. 2024 Apr 23;15(1):3438. doi: 10.1038/s41467-024-47776-6.

Authors

Ziyi Yu^{1

2}, Ningbo Fan³, Zhengqian Fu⁴, Biao He¹, Shiguang Yan¹, Henghui Cai¹, Xuefeng Chen¹, Linlin Zhang¹, Yuanyuan Zhang⁵, Bin Xu³, Genshui Wang⁶, Fangfang Xu^{7

8}

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of High Performance Ceramics and Superfine Microstructures & The Key Lab of Inorganic Functional Materials and Devices, Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 200050, China.
² School of Physical Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai, 201210, China.
³ Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Thin Films, School of Physical Science and Technology, Soochow University, Suzhou, 215006, China.
⁴ State Key Laboratory of High Performance Ceramics and Superfine Microstructures & The Key Lab of Inorganic Functional Materials and Devices, Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 200050, China. fmail600@mail.sic.ac.cn.
⁵ Key Laboratory of Polar Materials and Devices, Ministry of Education, Department of Electronic Science, East China Normal University, Shanghai, 200241, China.
⁶ State Key Laboratory of High Performance Ceramics and Superfine Microstructures & The Key Lab of Inorganic Functional Materials and Devices, Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 200050, China. genshuiwang@mail.sic.ac.cn.
⁷ State Key Laboratory of High Performance Ceramics and Superfine Microstructures & The Key Lab of Inorganic Functional Materials and Devices, Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai, 200050, China. ffxu@mail.sic.ac.cn.
⁸ School of Physical Science and Technology, ShanghaiTech University, Shanghai, 201210, China. ffxu@mail.sic.ac.cn.

Abstract

PbZrO₃ has been broadly considered as a prototypical antiferroelectric material for high-power energy storage. A recent theoretical study suggests that the ground state of PbZrO₃ is threefold-modulated ferrielectric, which challenges the generally accepted antiferroelectric configuration. However, such a novel ferrielectric phase was predicted only to be accessible at low temperatures. Here, we successfully achieve the room-temperature construction of the strongly competing ferrielectric and antiferroelectric state by strain-mediated phase separation in PbZrO₃/SrTiO₃ thin film. We demonstrate that the phase separation occurs spontaneously in quasi-periodic stripe-like patterns under a compressive misfit strain and can be tailored by varying the film thickness. The ferrielectric phase strikingly exhibitsa threefold modulation period with a nearly up-up-down configuration, which could be stabilized and manipulated by the formation and evolution of interfacial defects under applied strain. The present results construct a fertile ground for further exploring the physical properties and applications based on the novel ferrielectric phase.

Abstract

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