Nature Communications (Sep 2019)

Mechanical-force-induced non-local collective ferroelastic switching in epitaxial lead-titanate thin films

  • Xiaoyan Lu,
  • Zuhuang Chen,
  • Ye Cao,
  • Yunlong Tang,
  • Ruijuan Xu,
  • Sahar Saremi,
  • Zhan Zhang,
  • Lu You,
  • Yongqi Dong,
  • Sujit Das,
  • Hangbo Zhang,
  • Limei Zheng,
  • Huaping Wu,
  • Weiming Lv,
  • Guoqiang Xie,
  • Xingjun Liu,
  • Jiangyu Li,
  • Lang Chen,
  • Long-Qing Chen,
  • Wenwu Cao,
  • Lane W. Martin

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-11825-2
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 1
pp. 1 – 8

Abstract

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Clamping effects in ferroelestastic thin films limits their usefulness for applications such as sensitive mechanical sensors. Here, the authors report on non-local mechanical force induced switching in PbTiO3 thin films by tuning the material to a state of nearly energetically degenerate co-existing domains.