Liu H, Wu H, Ong KP, Yang T, Yang P, Das PK, Chi X, Zhang Y, Diao C, Wong WKA, Chew EP, Chen YF, Tan CKI, Rusydi A, Breese MBH, Singh DJ, Chen LQ, Pennycook SJ, Yao K. Giant piezoelectricity in oxide thin films with nanopillar structure. Science. 2020 Jul 17;369(6501):292-297. doi: 10.1126/science.abb3209. PMID: 32675370.
Abstract:
High-performance piezoelectric materials are critical components for electromechanical sensors and actuators. For more than 60 years, the main strategy for obtaining large piezoelectric response is to construct multiphase boundaries by tuning complex chemical compositions, where nanoscale domains with local structural and polar heterogeneity are formed. We used a different strategy to emulate such local heterogeneity by forming nanopillar regions in oxide thin films. We obtained a giant effective piezoelectric coefficient d_(33,f)^* of ~1098 pm/V with a high Curie temperature of ~ 450 °C. Our lead-free composition of sodium-deficient sodium niobate contained only three elements (Na, Nb and O). Forming local heterogeneity with nanopillars in the perovskite structure could be a general approach to design and optimize various functional materials.
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Funding Info:
The authors acknowledge the supports in part by Institute of Materials Research and Engineering, A*STAR, RIE2020 AME Core Funds - SERC Strategic Funds: Seeding R&D Activities for Competitive Grants (Grant number: A1718g0056), National Research Foundation Competitive Research Programme, NRF-CRP15-2015-04, and National Science Foundation (Grant number: DMR-1744213). H. Wu acknowledges Lee Kuan Yew Postdoctoral Fellowship through a Singapore Ministry of Education Tier 1 grant (R-284-000-212-114). S. J. P. and H. Wu are grateful to the Singapore Ministry of Education for a Tier 2 grant MOE2017-T2-1-129. We acknowledge the support of Singapore Synchrotron Light Source (SSLS) via NUS Core Support Grant C-380-003-003-001, which is a National Research Infrastructure under the National Research Foundation, Singapore. K. P. Ong acknowledge the support of Institute of High Performance Computing, Agency for Science, Technology And Research (IHPC, A*STAR). Work at the University of Missouri (D.J.S.) is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Basic Energy Sciences, Award DE-SC0019114.
Description:
This is the author’s version of the work. It is posted here by permission of the AAAS for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in [Science] on [369(6501) and 2020 Jul 17], DOI: [ 10.1126/science.abb3209]