Project

Unraveling the relationship between microstructure and piezoelectric properties in modified (Ba,Ca)(Ti,Zr)O3 thin films

Code
1280025N
Duration
01 November 2024 → 31 October 2027
Funding
Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO)
Research disciplines
  • Natural sciences
    • Inorganic chemistry not elsewhere classified
    • Chemical characterisation of materials
    • Inorganic green chemistry
Keywords
piezoelectrics and ferroelectrics Material synthesis Microstructural characterization of materials
 
Project description

Today, the rapid evolution of information technology requires materials and architectures that can handle and retrieve large amounts of data at short time scales and with minimum power consumption. Therefore, more reliable microelectronic devices with excellent piezoelectric properties have attracted great research interest. However, the traditional lead-based piezoelectric materials such as Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 are currently the most widely used material in such systems. This is due to their strong piezoelectric coefficient and electromechanical coupling coefficient. The lead-free (Ba,Ca)(Ti,Zr)O3 (BCTZ) material has been developed via chemical solution deposition (CSD) and pulsed laser deposition (PLD) methods, which is called promising and has a high piezoelectric coefficient. Unfortunately, these BCTZ materials show a poor piezoelectric thermal stability upon heating, which greatly limits their practical application. Thus, to enhance the overall performance of piezoelectric BCTZ material, several compositional and microstructural modifications (with the help of computational screening) are introduced in this project to improve the temperature stability in combination with the enhanced piezoelectric response. Therefore, extensive electrical and structural investigations (both in-situ and ex-situ) to understand the modification of BCTZ film are crucial and can be a door opener to enhance the overall performance of different functional films.