Phys.org  December 5, 2024 Strong coupling between polarization (P) and strain (ɛ) in ferroelectric complex oxides offers unique opportunities to dramatically tune their properties. An international team of researchers (USA – Pennsylvania State University, Cornell University, Stanford University, University of Nebraska, Argonne National Laboratory, Belgium, Germany) demonstrated strain tuning of ferroelectricity in epitaxial potassium niobate (KNbO3) thin films grown by sub-oxide molecular beam epitaxy. While bulk KNbO3 exhibited three ferroelectric transitions and a Curie temperature (Tc) of ≈676 K, phase-field modeling predicted that a biaxial strain pushes its Tc > 975 K, its decomposition temperature in air, and for −1.4% […]