Induced giant piezoelectricity in centrosymmetric oxides

• Published in: Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) Vol. 375; no. 6581; pp. 653 - 657
• Main Authors: Park, D-S, Hadad, M, Riemer, L M, Ignatans, R, Spirito, D, Esposito, V, Tileli, V, Gauquelin, N, Chezganov, D, Jannis, D, Verbeeck, J, Gorfman, S, Pryds, N, Muralt, P, Damjanovic, D
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States The American Association for the Advancement of Science 11-02-2022
• Subjects: Cerium; Cerium oxides; Crystal structure; Electric fields; Frequency dependence; Gadolinium; Piezoelectricity
• ISSN: 0036-8075; 1095-9203
• DOI: 10.1126/science.abm7497

Piezoelectrics are materials that linearly deform in response to an applied electric field. As a fundamental prerequisite, piezoelectric materials must have a noncentrosymmetric crystal structure. For more than a century, this has remained a major obstacle for finding piezoelectric materials. We circumvented this limitation by breaking the crystallographic symmetry and inducing large and sustainable piezoelectric effects in centrosymmetric materials by the electric field-induced rearrangement of oxygen vacancies. Our results show the generation of extraordinarily large piezoelectric responses [with piezoelectric strain coefficients (
) of ~200,000 picometers per volt at millihertz frequencies] in cubic fluorite gadolinium-doped CeO
films, which are two orders of magnitude larger than the responses observed in the presently best-known lead-based piezoelectric relaxor-ferroelectric oxide at kilohertz frequencies. These findings provide opportunities to design piezoelectric materials from environmentally friendly centrosymmetric ones.