Nanowerk September 16, 2023 Ferroelectricity in binary oxides including hafnia and zirconia is interesting because of their unconventional physical mechanisms and the potential for the integration of these materials into semiconductor workflows. Behaviors such as wake-up phenomena and an extreme sensitivity to electrode and processing conditions suggest that ferroelectricity in these materials is strongly influenced by other factors, including electrochemical boundary conditions and strain. An international team of researchers (USA – Oak Ridge National Laboratory, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Carnegie Mellon University, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Ukraine) argued that the properties of these materials emerge due to the interplay between […]
Category Archives: Ferroelectrics
Bending 2D nanomaterial could ‘switch on’ future technologies
Science Daily March 6, 2023 Mechanical flexibility of two-dimensional (2D) materials is shown to bring about unexpected behaviors to the recently discovered monolayer ferroelectrics, especially those displaying normal, off-plane polarization. Researchers at Rice University introduced a “ferro-flexo” coupling term into the energy expression, to account for the connection of ferroelectricity and bending of the layer, to predict and quantify its spontaneous curvature and how it affects the phase transitions. With InP as a representative example, the first-principles calculations revealed strong coupling between the ferroelectric polarization and the curvature of the layer having profound consequences for both mechanics and ferroelectricity of […]
Atom-thin walls could smash size, memory barriers in next-gen devices
Science Daily February 13, 2023 In nanoelectronics charged domain walls, especially in ferroelectric structures, serve as an active element. The ability to deterministically create and manipulate charged domain walls is essential to realize their functional properties in electronic devices. An international team of researchers (China, Singapore, USA – University of Nebraska, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology) developed and demonstrated a strategy for the controllable creation and manipulation of in-plane charged domain walls in BiFeO3 ferroelectric films a few nanometres thick. By using an in-situ biasing technique within a scanning transmission electron microscope, an unconventional layer-by-layer switching mechanism was […]
A quasiparticle that can transfer heat under electrical control
Science Daily February 1, 2023 An international team of researchers (USA – Ohio State University, Japan) has experimentally shown that an external electric field affects the velocity of the longitudinal acoustic phonons (vLA), thermal conductivity (κ), and diffusivity (D) in a bulk lead zirconium titanate–based ferroelectric. They found that phonon conduction dominates κ due to changes in the phonon dispersion, not in the phonon scattering. Since the ferron carries heat, that makes the amount of heat carried dependent on the electrical field. They wrote a new theory that relates an external electric field, the strain it induces in a ferroelectric, […]
Energetic ferroelectrics
Nanowerk October 14, 2021 A team of researchers in the US (SUNY Buffalo, University of Maryland, US Army Aberdeen Proving Ground) tested if two dissimilar materials – molecular energetic materials and ferroelectrics – can be combined to obtain a chemically driven electrical energy source with high-power density. They designed energetic molecular ferroelectrics consisting of imidazolium cations (energetic ion) and perchlorate anions (oxidizer) and described its thermal wave energy conversion with a specific power of 1.8 kW kg−1. They showed that chemically driven energy generator is a result of the coupling between energetic thermal and shock waves and a pyroelectric effect in molecular […]