Understanding ferroelectricity in layered perovskites : new ideas and insights from theory and experiments
Date
21/06/2015Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
ABO3 perovskites have fascinated solid-state chemists and physicists for decades because they display a seemingly inexhaustible variety of chemical and physical properties. However, despite the diversity of properties found among perovskites, very few of these materials are ferroelectric, or even polar, in bulk. In this Perspective, we highlight recent theoretical and experimental studies that have shown how a combination of non-polar structural distortions, commonly tilts or rotations of the BO6 octahedra, can give rise to polar structures or ferroelectricity in several families of layered perovskites. We discuss the crystal chemical origin of the polarization in each of these families -- which emerges through a so-called `trilinear coupling' or `hybrid improper' mechanism -- and emphasize areas in which further theoretical and experimental investigation is needed. We also consider how this mechanism may provide a generic route for designing not only new ferroelectrics, but also materials with various other multifunctionalities, such as magnetoelectrics and electric field-controllable metal-insulator transitions.
Citation
Benedek , N , Rondinelli , J , Djani , H , Lightfoot , P & Ghosez , P 2015 , ' Understanding ferroelectricity in layered perovskites : new ideas and insights from theory and experiments ' , Dalton Transactions , vol. 44 , no. 23 , pp. 10543-10558 . https://doi.org/10.1039/C5DT00010F
Publication
Dalton Transactions
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1477-9226Type
Journal article
Rights
Copyright 2015 the Authors. This work is made available online in accordance with the publisher’s policies. This is the author created, accepted version manuscript following peer review and may differ slightly from the final published version. The final published version of this work is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/C5DT00010F
Description
N. A. B. was supported by The Welch Foundation under Grant. No. F-1803. J. M. R. acknowledges support from the Penn State Center for Nanoscience, National Science Foundation grant no. DMR-1420620. Ph.G. acknowledges a research Professorship of the Francqui Foundation and financial supports of the ARC project TheMoTherm and FNRS project HiT4FiT.Collections
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