Piezoelectricity in nominally centrosymmetric phases
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Publication Date
2021-12-01Journal Title
Physical Review Research
ISSN
2643-1564
Publisher
American Physical Society (APS)
Type
Article
This Version
AM
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Aktas, O., Kangama, M., Linyu, G., Catalan, G., Ding, X., Zunger, A., & Salje, E. (2021). Piezoelectricity in nominally centrosymmetric phases. Physical Review Research https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.3.043221
Abstract
Compound phases often display properties that are symmetry-forbidden relative
to their nominal, average crystallographic symmetry, even if extrinsic reasons
(defects, strain, imperfections) are not apparent. Here, we investigate
macroscopic inversion symmetry breaking in nominally centrosymmetric materials
and measure Resonant Piezoelectric Spectroscopy (RPS) and Resonant Ultrasound
Spectroscopy (RUS) in 15 compounds, 18 samples, and 21 different phases,
including unpoled ferroelectrics, paraelectrics, relaxors, ferroelastics,
incipient ferroelectrics, and isotropic materials with low defect
concentrations, i.e. NaCl,cfused silica, and CaF2. We exclude the flexoelectric
effect as a source of the observed piezoelectricity yetcobserve
piezoelectricity in all nominally cubic phases of these samples. By scaling the
RPS intensities with those of RUS, we calibrate the effective piezoelectric
coefficients using single crystal quartz as standard. Using this scaling we
determine the effective piezoelectric modulus in nominally non-piezoelectric
phases, finding that the "symmetry-forbidden" piezoelectric effect ranges from
1 pm/V to 10E-5 pm/V. The values for unpoled ferroelectric phases are only
slightly higher than those in the paraelectric phase of the same material. The
lowest coefficients are well below the detection limit of conventional
piezoelectric measurements and demonstrate RPS as an ultra-highly sensitive
method to measure piezoelectricity. We suggestt hat symmetry-breaking
piezoelectricity in nominally centrosymmetric materials and disordered, unpoled
ferroelectrics is ubiquitous.
Keywords
cond-mat.mtrl-sci, cond-mat.mtrl-sci
Sponsorship
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/P024904/1)
European Commission Horizon 2020 (H2020) Marie Sk?odowska-Curie actions (861153)
Embargo Lift Date
2100-01-01
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevResearch.3.043221
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/331242
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