Room-temperature stabilizing strongly competing ferrielectric and antiferroelectric phases in PbZrO<sub>3</sub> by strain-mediated phase separation.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 38653960.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-47776-6 and PMC identifier 11039770.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
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.