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Breaking of macroscopic centric symmetry in paraelectric phases of ferroelectric materials and implications for flexoelectricity

Nature Materials volume 14, pages 224–229 (2015)Cite this article

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Abstract

A centrosymmetric stress cannot induce a polar response in centric materials; piezoelectricity is, for example, possible only in non-centrosymmetric structures. An exception is metamaterials with shape asymmetry, which may be polarized by stress even when the material is centric. In this case the mechanism is flexoelectricity, which relates polarization to a strain gradient. The flexoelectric response scales inversely with size, thus a large effect is expected in nanoscale materials. Recent experiments in polycrystalline, centrosymmetric perovskites (for example, (Ba, Sr)TiO3) have indicated values of flexoelectric coefficients that are orders of magnitude higher than theoretically predicted, promising practical applications based on bulk materials. We show that materials with unexpectedly large flexoelectric response exhibit breaking of the macroscopic centric symmetry through inhomogeneity induced by the high-temperature processing. The emerging electro-mechanical coupling is significant and may help to resolve the controversy surrounding the large apparent flexoelectric coefficients in this class of materials.

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Figure 1: Flipped trapezoidal prism experiment.
Figure 2: Pyroelectric current in BST60/40 and SrTiO3.
Figure 3: Frequency dependence of properties.
Figure 4: Thermally stimulated and pyroelectric currents.
Figure 5: Built-in polarization and its direction.
Figure 6: XRD analysis of a sintered BST60/40 sample.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation through NRP62 ‘Smart materials’ (Project No. 406240 -126091). The authors acknowledge the use of the Analytical Instrumentation Facility (AIF) at North Carolina State University, which is supported by the State of North Carolina and the National Science Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ceramics Laboratory, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne-EPFL, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland

    Alberto Biancoli & Dragan Damjanovic

  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, North Carolina State University Raleigh, North Carolina 27695, USA

    Chris M. Fancher & Jacob L. Jones

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  1. Alberto Biancoli
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Contributions

A.B. prepared all materials and performed most of the experiments. D.D. conceived the idea of testing the symmetry breaking and its effect on the apparent flexoelectric response, and performed some of the experiments. A.B. and D.D. analysed and interpreted the electrical data. C.M.F. performed XRD measurements and analysed the data under the supervision of J.L.J. D.D. wrote the article and all authors contributed and commented on the text.

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Correspondence to Dragan Damjanovic.

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Biancoli, A., Fancher, C., Jones, J. et al. Breaking of macroscopic centric symmetry in paraelectric phases of ferroelectric materials and implications for flexoelectricity. Nature Mater 14, 224–229 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat4139

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