TY - JOUR
T1 - Thick lead-free ferroelectric films with high Curie temperatures through nanocomposite-induced strain
AU - Harrington, Sophie A.
AU - Zhai, Junyi
AU - Denev, Sava
AU - Gopalan, Venkatraman
AU - Wang, Haiyan
AU - Bi, Zhenxing
AU - Redfern, Simon A.T.
AU - Baek, Seung Hyub
AU - Bark, Chung W.
AU - Eom, Chang Beom
AU - Jia, Quanxi
AU - Vickers, Mary E.
AU - MacManus-Driscoll, Judith L.
N1 - Funding Information:
The authors are grateful to A. Fouchet for his assistance with preliminary studies. The work was supported by Downing College Cambridge, the European Commission (Marie Curie Excellence Grant ‘NanoFen’, MEXT-CT-2004-014156), European Research Council (ERC) (grant no. ERC-2009-adG 247276), UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and US National Science Foundation (NSF 07-09831 and ECCS-0708759). We wish to acknowledge the use of the Chemical Database Service at Daresbury and help from the US Department of Energy through the Los Alamos National Laboratory/ Laboratory Directed Research and Development programme and the Center for Integrated Nanotechnologies.
PY - 2011/8
Y1 - 2011/8
N2 - Ferroelectric materials are used in applications ranging from energy harvesting to high-power electronic transducers. However, industry-standard ferroelectric materials contain lead, which is toxic and environmentally unfriendly. The preferred alternative, BaTiO3, is non-toxic and has excellent ferroelectric properties, but its Curie temperature of ∼1/4130 °C is too low to be practical. Strain has been used to enhance the Curie temperature of BaTiO3 (ref. 4) and SrTiO3 (ref. 5) films, but only for thicknesses of tens of nanometres, which is not thick enough for many device applications. Here, we increase the Curie temperature of micrometre-thick films of BaTiO3 to at least 330 °C, and the tetragonal-to-cubic structural transition temperature to beyond 800 °C, by interspersing stiff, self-assembled vertical columns of Sm2O 3 throughout the film thickness. The columns, which are 10 nm in diameter, strain the BaTiO3 matrix by 2.35%, forcing it to maintain its tetragonal structure and resulting in the highest BaTiO3 transition temperatures so far.
AB - Ferroelectric materials are used in applications ranging from energy harvesting to high-power electronic transducers. However, industry-standard ferroelectric materials contain lead, which is toxic and environmentally unfriendly. The preferred alternative, BaTiO3, is non-toxic and has excellent ferroelectric properties, but its Curie temperature of ∼1/4130 °C is too low to be practical. Strain has been used to enhance the Curie temperature of BaTiO3 (ref. 4) and SrTiO3 (ref. 5) films, but only for thicknesses of tens of nanometres, which is not thick enough for many device applications. Here, we increase the Curie temperature of micrometre-thick films of BaTiO3 to at least 330 °C, and the tetragonal-to-cubic structural transition temperature to beyond 800 °C, by interspersing stiff, self-assembled vertical columns of Sm2O 3 throughout the film thickness. The columns, which are 10 nm in diameter, strain the BaTiO3 matrix by 2.35%, forcing it to maintain its tetragonal structure and resulting in the highest BaTiO3 transition temperatures so far.
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U2 - 10.1038/nnano.2011.98
DO - 10.1038/nnano.2011.98
M3 - Article
C2 - 21725306
AN - SCOPUS:79961208827
SN - 1748-3387
VL - 6
SP - 491
EP - 495
JO - Nature nanotechnology
JF - Nature nanotechnology
IS - 8
ER -