Strain-controlled switching kinetics of epitaxial PbZr0.52Ti0.48O3 films

Ferroelectric switching in epitaxial GeTe films

Strain-induced symmetry reduction of epitaxial La0.67Sr0.33MnO3 films

Introduction Due to spin, lattice and orbital coupling, manganese-based La1-xSrxMnO3 (LSMO) compounds exhibit unusual physical properties, such as colossal magnetoresistance and almost total spin polarization (95% at 4 K) at the composition x = 0.33 [1]. Thus, La0.67Sr0.33MnO3 has significant potential for applications in spintronic devices such as magnetic field sensors, networked environmenta...

Stabilizing graphitic thin films of wurtzite materials by epitaxial strain.

Recent theory [Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 066102 (2006)] and experiment [Phys. Rev. Lett. 99, 026102 (2007)] show that (0001) ultrathin films of wurtzite (WZ) materials surprisingly transform into a stable graphitelike structure, but the stability is limited to thicknesses of only a few atomic layers. Using first-principles calculations of both freestanding and substrate-supported thin films, we pred...

Calculated strain energy of hexagonal epitaxial thin films

Generalized formulae for the strain energy of hexagonal thin films on both hexagonal and rhombohedral substrates have been developed. These formulae require knowledge of the elastic stiffness coefficients and the lattice parameters of the film and only the lattice parameters of the substrate. Example calculations of the strain energy present in the strained film-substrate material combinations ...

Strain-induced polarization rotation in epitaxial (001) BiFeO3 thin films.

Direct measurement of the remanent polarization of high quality (001)-oriented epitaxial BiFeO3 thin films shows a strong strain dependence, even larger than conventional (001)-oriented PbTiO3 films. Thermodynamic analysis reveals that a strain-induced polarization rotation mechanism is responsible for the large change in the out-of-plane polarization of (001) BiFeO3 with biaxial strain while t...