Enhancement of energy storage in epitaxial PbZrO₃antiferroelectric films using strain engineering

We demonstrate an approach to enhance the energy storage density W of antiferroelectric film through simple altering a crystallographic orientation of the substrate. We reveal that the antiferroelectric phase stability of PbZrO₃can be enhanced for the (110) or (111) SrTiO₃substrate orientation, thus suppresses the antiferroelectric-ferroelectric phase transition to higher electric field with ∼120-kV/cm increment. In addition, the polarization values of these films are also favorably increased hence increases W by 5.3-J/cm³at 700-kV/cm. The observed enhancement is found to originate from a high sensitivity of phase transition to mechanical confinements due to the volume expansion at the transition.