Piezoelectric thin-film superlattices without using piezoelectric materials

By N. Sharma, Chad M. Landis, P. Sharma. 2010

212 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In this paper we show that experimentally realizable apparently piezoelectric thin-film superlattices can be created from nonpiezoelectric materials provided an odd-order (e.g., trilayer) stacking sequence is used. The size-dependent mechanism of flexoelectricity, which couples gradients of strain to polarization, allows such a possibility. We present closed-form analytical expressions for the response of various thin-film and superlattice configurations. We also clarify some of the subtleties that arise in considering interface boundary conditions in the theory of flexoelectricity as well as the relationship of flexoelectricity to the frequently used polarization gradient terms used in modeling ferroelectrics. We find that for certain (optimum) material combinations and length scales, thin-film superlattices yielding apparent piezoelectricity close to 75% of ferroelectric barium titanate may be achievable.

Subfields: Materials Chemistry, Mechanics of Materials

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e0f1713d1cc470c4b5bd54ca86a566ba3a5a011d

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Materials Chemistry

1. A. Tagantsev
2. Q. Deng
3. Liping Liu
4. P. Chhapadia
5. P. Mohammadi
6. G. Catalán
7. P. Zubko
8. P. Sharma

In Mechanics of Materials

1. A. Tagantsev
2. Q. Deng
3. P. Chhapadia
4. P. Mohammadi
5. Liping Liu
6. P. Sharma

Citations in the corpus

• Flexoelectric Effect in Solids (2013, background): “relies on strain gradients at surfaces or interfaces between different non-piezoelectric materials [116].”
• Flexoelectricity in soft materials and biological membranes (2014, background): “: þ1 713 743 4502; et al., 2007; Eliseev et al., 2009, 2011; Maranganti and Sharma, 2009; Majdoub et al., 2008a,b, 2009a,b; Sharma et al., 2010, 2012; Gharbi et al., 2011; Kalinin and Meunier, 2008; Dumitrica et al., 2002).”
• Fundamentals of flexoelectricity in solids (2013, unknown): “Important theoretical results on piezoelectric meta-materials and other systems exhibiting an effective piezoelectric response were reported by Fousek et al [57] (symmetry consideration) and by Sharma and coworkers [58–60] (continuum-theory calculations).”
• Curvature-dependent surface energy and implications for nanostructures (2011, background): “…few examples among many others are that melting temperature can be severely suppressed in nanoparticles (Qi, 2005), Si quantum dots may exhibit optical activity not seen in its bulk form (Peng et al., 2006), and non-piezoelectric materials may be coaxed into behaving like one (Sharma et al., 2010).”
• Nanoscale flexoelectric energy harvesting (2014, background): “…Zubko et al., 2007; Fu et al., 2006, 2007) and theoretical work (Sharma et al., 2007; Majdoub et al., 2009a; Eliseev et al., 2009, 2011; Maranganti and Sharma, 2009; Majdoub et al., 2008a,b, 2009b,c; Sharma et al., 2010, 2012; Gharbi et al., 2011; Kalinin and Meunier, 2008; Dumitrica et al., 2002).”