Dynamic flexoelectric effect in perovskites from first principles calculations

Using the dynamical matrix of a crystal obtained from ab initio calculations, we have evaluated for the first time the strength of the dynamic flexoelectric effect and found it comparable to that of the static bulk flexoelectric effect, in agreement with earlier order-of-magnitude estimates. We also proposed a method of evaluation of these effects directly from the simulated phonon spectra. This method can also be applied to the analysis of the experimental phonon spectra, being currently the only one enabling experimental characterization of the static bulk flexoelectric effect

Positive effective Q12 electrostrictive coefficient in perovskites

It is demonstrated that for classical perovskites such as BaTiO3, SrTiO3 and PbTiO3 electrostrictive strain induced by an electric field may not obey traditionally considered "extension along the field, contraction perpendicular to it" behavior if a sample is cut obliquely to the cubic crystallographic directions

Tunable and abrupt thermal quenching of photoluminescence in high-resistivity Zn-doped GaN

Tunable and abrupt thermal quenching of photoluminescence by increasing temperature has been observed for the blue band in high-resistivity Zn-doped GaN. The photoluminescence intensity dropped by several orders of magnitude within a few Kelvins, and the temperature at which that drop occurred could be tuned by changing the incident light intensity. Modeling the system with rate equations for competing electron-hole recombination flows through three defect species, one of which is a nonradiative deep donor, gives results consistent with these observations

Journée ENAC

1. Préparation pour la journée ENAC avril-mai 2016 2. Présentation des neurons à la journée enac en collaboration avec Elab et ActLight 3. Design et fabrication de pièces imprimante 3D pour nos prototypes 4. développement de software visualisation et traitement de donnée 5. Simulation FEM de la structure du capteur de lumière DP

Structure and pressure-induced ferroelectric phase transition in antiphase domain boundaries of strontium titanate from first principles

In this work, using zero kelvin ab initio calculations, we revisit the structure and ferroelectric phase transition in antiphase domain boundaries (APBs) in SrTiO3 (STO), which has been previously addressed in terms of a phenomenological approach. We confirmed the main qualitative conclusion of the phenomenological results that APBs normal to the rotation axis of the oxygen octahedra ("easy" walls) do not exhibit the transition while those parallel to the rotation axis ("hard" walls) do. However, we found the structure of the hard walls to be close to the Ising type in contrast to the phenomenological prediction of the nearly Neel type. We simulated a pressure-induced phase transition in the hard wall. Combining the results of simulation and experimental data on STO, we evaluated the pressure sensitivity of the ferroelectricity in the hard wall at low temperatures to show that it can be suppressed with very small pressure (a few kbar). We also roughly estimated the ferroelectric transition temperature in the hard wall corroborating the result of the phenomenological treatment

Ferroelectric translational antiphase boundaries in nonpolar materials

Ferroelectric materials are heavily used in electro-mechanics and electronics. Inside the ferroelectric, domain walls separate regions in which the spontaneous polarization is differently oriented. Properties of ferroelectric domain walls can differ from those of the domains themselves, leading to new exploitable phenomena. Even more exciting is that a non-ferroelectric material may have domain boundaries that are ferroelectric. Many materials possess translational antiphase boundaries. Such boundaries could be interesting entities to carry information if they were ferroelectric. Here we show first that antiphase boundaries in antiferroelectrics may possess ferroelectricity. We then identify these boundaries in the classical antiferroelectric lead zirconate and evidence their polarity by electron microscopy using negative spherical-aberration imaging technique. Ab initio modelling confirms the polar bi-stable nature of the walls. Ferroelectric antiphase boundaries could make high-density non-volatile memory; in comparison with the magnetic domain wall memory, they do not require current for operation and are an order of magnitude thinner

MPEG Immersive Video tools for Light-Field Head Mounted Displays

Light-Field displays project hundreds of microparallax views for users to perceive 3D without wearing glasses. It results in gigantic bandwidth requirements if all views would be transmitted, even using conventional video compression per view. MPEG Immersive Video (MIV) follows a smarter strategy by transmitting only key images and some metadata to synthesize all the missing views. We developed (and will demonstrate) a realtime Depth Image Based Rendering software that follows this approach for synthesizing all Light-Field micro-parallax views from a couple of RGBD input views.demouinfo:eu-repo/semantics/inPres

Piezoelectric enhancement under negative pressure

Enhancement of ferroelectric properties, both spontaneous polarization and Curie temperature under negative pressure had been predicted in the past from first principles and recently confirmed experimentally. In contrast, piezoelectric properties are expected to increase by positive pressure, through polarization rotation. Here we investigate the piezoelectric response of the classical PbTiO3, Pb(Zr,Ti)O-3 and BaTiO3 perovskite ferroelectrics under negative pressure from first principles and find significant enhancement. Piezoelectric response is then tested experimentally on free-standing PbTiO3 and Pb(Zr,Ti)O-3 nanowires under self-sustained negative pressure, confirming the theoretical prediction. Numerical simulations verify that negative pressure in nanowires is the origin of the enhanced electromechanical properties. The results may be useful in the development of highly performing piezoelectrics, including lead-free ones