TY - JOUR
T1 - Lead-Free Polycrystalline Ferroelectric Nanowires with Enhanced Curie Temperature
AU - Datta, Anuja
AU - Fornari, Marco
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was financially supported by the European Research Council through an ERC Starting Grant (Grant No. ERC–2014–STG–639526, NANOGEN). S.K.-N., A.D. and Y.C are grateful for financial support from this same grant. S-L.S acknowledges funding through the EPSRC grant EP/M010589/1. C.O acknowledges studentship funding from the China Scholarship Council and the Cambridge Commonwealth, European and International Trust. M.F. acknowledges collaboration with the AFLOW Consortium (http://www.aflow.org) under the sponsorship of DOD-ONR (N000141310635 and N000141512266). P.E.S.-J. was supported by a Marie Curie–Junta de Andalucia Postdoc Talentia grant. Supporting data for this paper is available at the DSpace@Cambridge data repository (https://dx.doi.org/10.17863/CAM.9457).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 The Authors. Published by WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim
PY - 2017
Y1 - 2017
N2 - Ferroelectrics are important technological materials with wide-ranging applications in electronics, communication, health, and energy. While lead-based ferroelectrics have remained the predominant mainstay of industry for decades, environmentally friendly lead-free alternatives are limited due to relatively low Curie temperatures (T C) and/or high cost in many cases. Efforts have been made to enhance T C through strain engineering, often involving energy-intensive and expensive fabrication of thin epitaxial films on lattice-mismatched substrates. Here, a relatively simple and scalable sol–gel synthesis route to fabricate polycrystalline (Ba0.85Ca0.15)(Zr0.1Ti0.9)O3 nanowires within porous templates is presented, with an observed enhancement of T C up to ≈300 °C as compared to ≈90 °C in the bulk. By combining experiments and theoretical calculations, this effect is attributed to the volume reduction in the template-grown nanowires that modifies the balance between different structural instabilities. The results offer a cost-effective solution-based approach for strain-tuning in a promising lead-free ferroelectric system, thus widening their current applicability.
AB - Ferroelectrics are important technological materials with wide-ranging applications in electronics, communication, health, and energy. While lead-based ferroelectrics have remained the predominant mainstay of industry for decades, environmentally friendly lead-free alternatives are limited due to relatively low Curie temperatures (T C) and/or high cost in many cases. Efforts have been made to enhance T C through strain engineering, often involving energy-intensive and expensive fabrication of thin epitaxial films on lattice-mismatched substrates. Here, a relatively simple and scalable sol–gel synthesis route to fabricate polycrystalline (Ba0.85Ca0.15)(Zr0.1Ti0.9)O3 nanowires within porous templates is presented, with an observed enhancement of T C up to ≈300 °C as compared to ≈90 °C in the bulk. By combining experiments and theoretical calculations, this effect is attributed to the volume reduction in the template-grown nanowires that modifies the balance between different structural instabilities. The results offer a cost-effective solution-based approach for strain-tuning in a promising lead-free ferroelectric system, thus widening their current applicability.
M3 - Article
VL - 27
JO - Advanced Functional Materials
JF - Advanced Functional Materials
SN - 1616-301X
IS - 29
ER -