The antiferroelectricity of the historical oxide, PbZrO3, remains heavily debated especially when it comes to low film thicknesses. Conventional oxide substrates induce significant lattice mismatch, causing rapid relaxation and defect formation during growth. In a collaborative work including C2N, LAF, and LPS from Paris-Saclay, epitaxial thin films of PbZrO3 were grown on artificial substrates of LaLuO3 by pulsed laser deposition, using a buffer electrode of SrPbO3. This specific epitaxial stack introduces some tensile strain in the PbZrO3 layers and stabilizes the orthorhombic antiferroelectric phase from thicknesses of 200 nm down to 9 nm. The resulting capacitors exhibit characteristic double hysteresis in polarization vs electric field, confirmed by local scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) observations of the up-up-down-down antipolar pattern. These findings emphasize the critical role of epitaxial strain in preserving antiferroelectricity at the nanoscale.
References :
Establishing a pure antiferroelectric PbZrO3 phase through tensile epitaxial strain
Krina Parmar1,2, Pauline Dufour1, Emma Texier2, Cécile Carrétéro1, Xiaoyan Li3 , Florian Godel1, Jirka Hlinka4, Brahim Dkhil5, Daniel Sando6, Hugo Aramberri7, Jorge Íñiguez-González7, Stéphane Fusil1, Alexandre Gloter3, Thomas Maroutian2 et Vincent Garcia1
Nat Commun 16, 6536 (2025).
DOI : https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-61867-y
Affiliations
1 Laboratoire Albert Fert, CNRS, Thales, Université Paris-Saclay, Palaiseau, France
2 Centre de Nanosciences et de Nanotechnologies, CNRS, Université Paris-Saclay, Palaiseau, France
3 Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, CNRS, Université Paris-Saclay, Orsay, France
4 Institute of Physics, Academy of Sciences, Praha, Czech Republic
5 Université Paris-Saclay, CentraleSupélec, CNRS, Laboratoire SPMS, Gif-sur-Yvette, France
6 MacDiarmid Institute, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand
7 Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg
Keywords: Antiferroelectricity, functional oxides, epitaxy
Contacts: Thomas Maroutian, C2N et Vincent Garcia, LAF
Figure: (Left) STEM image of strained PbZrO3 on SrPbO3 – buffered LaLuO3 ; (Right) Antipolar texture of 9 nm-thick PbZrO3 with alternating up-up (blue) down-down (red) shifts of Pb atoms. (Bottom right) Sketch of strained PbZrO3 lattice.
Part of this work has been supported by the French Renatech network for nanofabrication.
