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Phase-field modeling of the influence of domain structures on the electrocaloric effects in PbTiO3 thin films

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Abstract

A phase-field model has been developed to study the influence of epitaxial strains and domain structures on the electrocaloric effects (ECEs) in PbTiO3 (PTO) thin films. The simulated domain-switching dynamics obtained from the proposed model was tallied with the existing experimental results. In the case of single-domain PTO thin film, the ECE gradually increased with the increasing epitaxial strain, whereas, in the case of poly-domain PTO thin film, the influence of epitaxial strain on ECE can be divided into three regions of stable domain structures, i.e., c-domains, a/c-domains, and a-domains regions. It is worth noting that the maximum ECE occurred under a tensile epitaxial strain in the a/c-domains region, which was the consequence of the competition between the enhancement of ECE and the reduction of c-domains volume fraction, both caused by the increasing tensile epitaxial strain. Although the change of temperature arising from the ECE may not be large enough to be viable for practical applications, it does illustrate the important influence of domain structures on the ECEs of thin films, which has not gained much attention of most researchers whose focus is still on single-domain thin films.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the support of the eScience Grant (Project No.: 06-02-10-SF0195) provided by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation (MOSTI), Malaysia, as well as the Advanced Engineering Programme and School of Engineering, Monash University Malaysia.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Engineering, Monash University Malaysia, Bandar Sunway, 46150, Malaysia

    Jun Yang Lee & Ai Kah Soh

  2. Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics, Beijing, 100094, People’s Republic of China

    Hai Tao Chen

  3. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA, 16802, USA

    Liang Hong

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  1. Jun Yang Lee
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  2. Ai Kah Soh
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  4. Liang Hong
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Correspondence to Ai Kah Soh.

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Lee, J.Y., Soh, A.K., Chen, H.T. et al. Phase-field modeling of the influence of domain structures on the electrocaloric effects in PbTiO3 thin films. J Mater Sci 50, 1382–1393 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-014-8698-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-014-8698-x

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