Ferroelectricity is a well-known phenomenon commonly used in scientific and industrial communities. Ferroelectric materials are the building blocks of different devices and technological innovations. This book presents an overview of the basic phenomenon of ferroelectricity and different ferroelectrics and ferroelectric devices, including their theoretical study, synthesis, characterization, and application. Chapters cover such topics as the basics of ferroelectricity, perovskite ferroelectrics and relaxor ferroelectrics, piezoelectricity, and more.

This book presents selected topics on processing and properties of ferroelectric materials that are currently the focus of attention in scientific and technical research. Ferro-piezoelectric ceramics are key materials in devices for many applications, such as automotive, healthcare and non-destructive testing. As they are polycrystalline, non-centrosymmetric materials, their piezoelectricity is induced by the so-called poling process. This is based on the principle of polarization reversal by the action of an electric field that characterizes the ferroelectric materials. This book was born with the aim of increasing the awareness of the multifunctionality of ferroelectric materials among different communities, such as researchers, electronic engineers, end-users and manufacturers, working on and with ferro-piezoelectric ceramic materials and devices which are based on them. The initiative to write this book comes from a well-established group of researchers at the Laboratories of Ferroelectric Materials, Materials Science Institute of Madrid (ICMM-CSIC). This group has been working in different areas concerning thin films and bulk ceramic materials since the mid-1980s. It is a partner of the Network of Excellence on Multifunctional and Integrated Piezoelectric Devices (MIND) of the EC, in which the European Institute of Piezoelectric Materials and Devices has its origin.

This book shows how a small toolbox of experimental techniques, physical chemistry concepts as well as quantum/classical mechanics and statistical methods can be used to understand, explain and even predict extraordinary applications of these advanced engineering materials and biomolecules. It highlights how improving the material foresight by design, including the fundamental understanding of their physical and chemical properties, can provide new technological levels in the future.

Ferroelectric materials exhibit a wide spectrum of functional properties, including switchable polarization, piezoelectricity, high non-linear optical activity, pyroelectricity, and non-linear dielectric behaviour. These properties are crucial for application in electronic devices such as sensors, microactuators, infrared detectors, microwave phase filters and, non-volatile memories. This unique combination of properties of ferroelectric materials has attracted researchers and engineers for a long time. This book reviews a wide range of diverse topics related to the phenomenon of ferroelectricity (in the bulk as well as thin film form) and provides a forum for scientists, engineers, and students working in this field. The present book containing 24 chapters is a result of contributions of experts from international scientific community working in different aspects of ferroelectricity related to experimental and theoretical work aimed at the understanding of ferroelectricity and their utilization in devices. It provides an up-to-date insightful coverage to the recent advances in the synthesis, characterization, functional properties and potential device applications in specialized areas.

Ferroelectric materials are known and valued for their multifunctionality arising from the possibility to perturb the remnant ferroelectric polarization by electric field, temperature and/or mechanical stimuli. While inorganic ferroelectrics dominate the current market, their organic counterparts may provide highly desired properties like eco-friendliness, easy processability and flexibility, concomitantly opening unique opportunities to combine multiple functionalities into a single compound that facilitates unprecedented device concepts and designs. Supramolecular organic ferroelectrics of columnar discotic type, that are the topic of this thesis, offer additional advantages related to their strong hierarchical self-assembly and easy tunability by molecular structure modifications, allowing optimization of ferroelectric characteristics and their hybridization with, e.g., semiconductivity. This not only leads to textbook ferroelectric materials that can be used as model systems to understand the general behaviour of ferroics, but also gives rise to previously unobserved effects stemming from the interplay of different functionalities. The core-shell structure of the molecules under the scope enables multiple pathways forrational design by molecular structure modification. This was firstly pursued via peripheral tail engineering on an archetypal self-assembling ferroelectric trialkylbenzene-1,3,5-tricarboxamide (BTA). We found that by shortening the alkyl chain length all the ferroelectric properties can be continuously tuned. In particular, changing the tail from C18H37 to C6H13causes an increase in depolarization activation energy (~0.8 eV to ~1.55 eV), coercive field(~25 V/?m to ~50 V/?m) and remnant polarization (~20 mC/m2 to ~60 mC/m2). The combination of the mentioned characteristics resulted in a record polarization retention time of close to 3 months at room temperature for capacitor devices of the material having the shortest alkyl chain – BTA-C6, which at the time of writing was one of the best results for liquid-crystalline ferroelectrics. Taking one step further, we experimentally demonstrated how introduction of branched-tailsubstituents results in materials with a wide operating temperature range and a data retention time of more than 10 years in thin-film solution-processed capacitor devices already atelevated temperatures with no measurable depolarization at room temperature. The observed differences between linear- and branched-tail compounds were analysed using density functional theory (DFT) and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. We concluded that morphological factors like improved packing quality and reduced disorder, rather than electrostatic interactions or intra/inter-columnar steric hindrance, underlay the superior properties of the branched-tailed BTAs. Synergistic effects upon blending of compounds with branched and linear sidechains were shown to further improve the materials’ characteristics. Exploiting the excellent ferroelectric performance and the well-defined nanostructure of BTAs, we experimentally determined the Preisach (hysteron) distribution of BTA and confronted it to the one obtained for the semi-crystalline P(VDF:TrFE). This allowed to elucidate how the broadening of the Preisach distribution relates to the materials’ morphology. We further connected the experimental Preisach distribution to the corresponding microscopic switching kinetics. We argue that the combination of the two underlays the macroscopic dispersive switching kinetics as commonly observed for practical ferroelectrics. These insights lead to guidelines for further advancement of ferroelectric materials both for conventional and multi-bit data storage applications. Although having strong differences in the Preisach distribution, BTA and P(VDF:TrFE) both demonstrate negative piezoelectricity – a rare anomalous phenomenon which is characteristic to two-phased materials and has never been observed in small-molecular ferroelectrics. We measured a pronounced negative piezoelectric effect in a whole family of BTAs and revealed its tunability by mesogenic tail substitution and structural disorder. While the large- and small-signal strain in highly ordered thin-film BTA capacitor devices are dominated by intrinsic contributions and originates from piezostriction, rising disorder introduces additional extrinsic factors that boost the large-signal d33 up to ?20 pm/V in short-tailed molecules. Interestingly, homologues with longer mesogenic tails show a large-signal electromechanical response that is dominated by the quadratic Maxwell strain with significant mechanical softening upon polarization switching, whereas the small-signal strain remains piezostrictive. Molecular dynamics and DFT calculations both predict a positive d33 for defect-free BTA stacks. Hence, the measured negative macroscopic d33 is attributed to the presence of structural defects that enable the dimensional effect to dominate the piezoelectric response of BTA thin films. The true multifunctionality of supramolecular discotics manifests when large semiconducting cores surrounded by field-switchable strongly polar moieties are introduced in the structure. We showed how the combination of switchable dipolar side groups and the semiconducting core of the newly synthetized C3-symmetric benzotristhiophene molecule (BTTTA) leads to an ordered columnar material showing continuous tunability from injection- to bulk-limited conductivity modulation. Both these resistive switching mechanisms may lead to the next-generation high-density non-volatile rewritable memory devices with high on/off ratios and non-destructive data readout – the element that has been desperately sought after to enablefully organic flexible electronics. Utbredd elektronisering och det högst aktuella fenomenet sakernas internet (Internet of Things) ställer höga krav på nästa generations elektroniska system. Produkterna ska vara lätta att framställa med miljövänliga metoder, låg kostnadsproduktion och skalbarhet (t. ex. tryckt elektronik), återvinningsbarhet eller biologisk nedbrytbarhet (gällande engångselektronik), mekanisk flexibilitet (formbara bärbara system), kemisk stabilitet, till och med biokompatibilitet (t. ex. implanterbara system) – dessa är bara några utmaningar som den kommande tekniken behöver övervinna. Organiska material kan åstadkomma alla dessa önskade egenskaper, samtidigt som man skapar unika möjligheter att kombinera flera funktionaliteter till en enda sammansättning som underlättar nydanande komponenter och design. Ferroelektriska material kännetecknas av pyroelektriska, piezoelektriska och dielektriska egenskaper. Denna mångsidighet möjliggör icke-flyktiga minnesenheter, temperatur- och taktila sensorer, olika transduktorer och manöverdon, som alla baseras på förändringar av den ferroelektriska restpolarisationen genom fält-, temperatur- och / eller mekaniska stimuleringar. Diskformade supramolekylära organiska ferroelektriska ämnen ger ytterligare fördelar tack vare deras modifierbara molekylstrukturer och starka hierarkiska självorganisation som staplar diskarna i kolumner. På detta sätt kan lättbearbetningsbara organiska ferroelektriska material med hög restpolarisering och extrem datalagring konstrueras molekylärt. På grund av deras väldefinierade nanostrukturer kan sådana material användas som modellsystem för att förstå det allmänna beteendet hos polykristallina ferroelektriska material. De uppvisar också ensällsynt negativ piezoelektricitet som är atypisk för små molekylära material och härrör från deras komplexa nanostruktur. Den verkliga multifunktionaliteten hos diskformade supramolekylära ämnen framträder när stora halvledande kärnor omgivna av starkt polära delar, som är växlingsbara via ett elektriskt fält, introduceras i strukturen. Oöverträffad resistiv omkoppling, inducerad av den asymmetriska laddningstransporten beroende på polarisationsriktningen med rekordhög datalagringstid, upptäcktes efter optimering av molekylstrukturen. Även en konceptuellt enklare resistiv omkopplingsmekanism bunden till en modulation av laddningsinjektionsbarriären genom gränssnittsdipolerna observerades. Båda dessa fenomen kan bidra till nästa generations icke-flyktiga överskrivningsbara minnesenheter med högdensitet, stora på av-förhållanden, och icke-destruktiv dataavläsning – vilket är kritiskt för att möjliggöra helt organisk flexibel elektronik.

This book presents theory, fundamentals and applications of ferroelectricy. 24 chapters gather reviews and research reports covering the spectrum of ferroelectricity. It describes the current levels of understanding of various aspects of ferroelectricity as presented by authorities in the field. Topics include relaxors, piezoelectrics, microscale and nanoscale studies, polymers and composites, unusual properties, and techniques and devices. The book is intended for physicists, engineers and materials scientists working with ferroelectric materials.

Selected, peer reviewed papers from International Conference on Multifunctional Materials and Structures, July 28-31, 2008, Hong Kong, P.R. China

FERROIC MATERIALS-BASED TECHNOLOGIES The book addresses the prospective, relevant, and original research developments in the ferroelectric, magnetic, and multiferroic fields. Ferroic materials have sparked widespread attention because they represent a broad spectrum of elementary physics and are employed in a plethora of fields, including flexible memory, enormous energy harvesting/storage, spintronic functionalities, spin caloritronics, and a large range of other multi-functional devices. With the application of new ferroic materials, strong room-temperature ferroelectricity with high saturation polarization may be established in ferroelectric materials, and magnetism with significant magnetization can be accomplished in magnetic materials. Furthermore, magnetoelectric interaction between ferroelectric and magnetic orderings is high in multiferroic materials, which could enable a wide range of innovative devices. Magnetic, ferroelectric, and multiferroic 2D materials with ultrathin characteristics above ambient temperature are often expected to enable future miniaturization of electronics beyond Moore’s law for energy-efficient nanodevices. This book addresses the prospective, relevant, and original research developments in the ferroelectric, magnetic, and multiferroic fields. Audience The book will interest materials scientists, physicists, and engineers working in ferroic and multiferroic materials.

A comprehensive guide to efficiently scavenge multi-energies from the surrounding environment to power some electronic devices and realize self-powered sensing! With the advantages of high-integration level, low cost, and high-conversion efficiency, hybridized nanogenerators have many potential applications in multi-energy scavenging and sensor fields. This book offers a comprehensive review of the design, performance, and applications of hybridized and coupled nanogenerators. The author a noted expert on the topic explores the various new hybridized and multi-effects coupled nanogenerators. The book examines the current approaches of improving electric generation performance and offers an introduction to the applications of hybridized nanogenerators in energy harvesting and sensing. This technology has proven to be highly applicable in multi-energy scavenging and self-powered sensor fields. This book includes: Examines the potential applications of hybridized and coupled nanogenerators in multi-energy scavenging and sensor fields Covers the principles of device design Explores the most current approaches to improve performance Reviews various multi-effects coupled nanogenerators and their potential applications Written for materials scientists, engineering scientists, electronics engineers, bioengineers, sensor developers, and sensor industry professionals, This book is a guide to hybridized and coupled nanogenerators that achieve the maximum utilization of multi-type and stable energies.