skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Room-temperature relaxor ferroelectricity and photovoltaic effects in tin titanate directly deposited on a silicon substrate

Journal Article · · Physical Review B
 [1];  [2];  [3];  [4];  [5];  [4];  [6];  [5];  [7];  [7];  [8];  [1];  [9]
  1. Univ. of Puerto Rico, San Juan, PR (United States). Dept. of Physics and Inst. for Functional Nanomaterials
  2. Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States). Materials Science Division; Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
  3. Univ. of Illinois, Chicago, IL (United States). Dept. of Chemical Engineering
  4. Univ. of Connecticut, Storrs, CT (United States). Inst. of Materials Science, Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering
  5. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
  6. Univ. of Illinois, Chicago, IL (United States). Dept. of Chemical Engineering, and Dept. of Bioengineering
  7. Univ. of St. Andrews, Scotland (United Kingdom). School of Chemistry
  8. Univ. of St. Andrews, Scotland (United Kingdom). School of Physics and Astronomy
  9. Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States). Materials Science Division; Korea Advanced Inst. Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon (Korea, Republic of). Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering

Tin titanate (SnTiO3) has been notoriously impossible to prepare as a thin-film ferroelectric, probably because high-temperature annealing converts much of the Sn2+ to Sn4+. In the present paper, we show two things: first, perovskite phase SnTiO3 can be prepared by atomic-layer deposition directly onto p-type Si substrates; and second, these films exhibit ferroelectric switching at room temperature, with p-type Si acting as electrodes. X-ray diffraction measurements reveal that the film is single-phase, preferred-orientation ferroelectric perovskite SnTiO3. Our films showed well-saturated, square, and repeatable hysteresis loops of around 3μC/cm2 remnant polarization at room temperature, as detected by out-of-plane polarization versus electric field and field cycling measurements. Furthermore, photovoltaic and photoferroelectricity were found in Pt/SnTiO3/Si/SnTiO3/Pt heterostructures, the properties of which can be tuned through band-gap engineering by strain according to first-principles calculations. This is a lead-free room-temperature ferroelectric oxide of potential device application.

Research Organization:
Argonne National Lab. (ANL), Argonne, IL (United States); Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
National Science Foundation (NSF); USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES) (SC-22). Materials Sciences & Engineering Division; USDOD; National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF); USDOE
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-06CH11357; FA95501610295; 1002410; AC05-00OR22725
OSTI ID:
1425214
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1421879; OSTI ID: 1435330
Journal Information:
Physical Review B, Vol. 97, Issue 5; ISSN 2469-9950
Publisher:
American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 27 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

References (36)

New Type of First-Order Phase Transition in Ferroelectric Thin Films journal February 1973
Projector augmented-wave method journal December 1994
Hybrid functionals based on a screened Coulomb potential journal May 2003
Efficiency of ab-initio total energy calculations for metals and semiconductors using a plane-wave basis set journal July 1996
Photoelectric Effects in Single Domain BiFeO 3 Crystals journal July 2012
Critical exponents of the dielectric constants in diffused-phase-transition crystals journal January 1982
Switchable photovoltaic and polarization modulated rectification in Si-integrated Pt/(Bi0.9Sm0.1)(Fe0.97Hf0.03)O3/LaNiO3 heterostructures journal October 2015
Structural and Dielectric Properties of SnTiO 3 , a Putative Ferroelectric journal May 2011
Special points for Brillouin-zone integrations journal June 1976
Depolarization corrections to the coercive field in thin-film ferroelectrics journal June 2003
Efficient iterative schemes for ab initio total-energy calculations using a plane-wave basis set journal October 1996
From ultrasoft pseudopotentials to the projector augmented-wave method journal January 1999
Photo-induced ferroelectric switching in perovskite CH 3 NH 3 PbI 3 films journal January 2017
Effect of Pressure on Structural, Electronic and Elastic Properties of Cubic (Pm3m) SnTiO<sub>3</sub> Using First Principle Calculation journal April 2012
Explanation of the apparent sublinear photoconductivity of photorefractive barium titanate journal April 1990
A photoferroelectric material is more than the sum of its parts journal March 2012
Inhomogeneous Electron Gas journal November 1964
Oxygen vacancy migration and time-dependent leakage current behavior of Ba0.3Sr0.7TiO3 thin films journal March 2005
Structural, Electronic, and Lattice Dynamics of PbTiO 3 , SnTiO 3 , and SnZrO 3 : A Comparative First-Principles Study journal January 2013
Photoferroelectric and Photopiezoelectric Properties of Organometal Halide Perovskites journal April 2016
Direct observation of region by region suppression of the switchable polarization (fatigue) in Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 thin film capacitors with Pt electrodes journal May 1998
Unipolar resistive switching behavior of amorphous YCrO 3 films for nonvolatile memory applications journal August 2014
Atomic layer deposition of environmentally benign SnTiO x as a potential ferroelectric material
  • Chang, Siliang; Selvaraj, Sathees Kannan; Choi, Yoon-Young
  • Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology A: Vacuum, Surfaces, and Films, Vol. 34, Issue 1 https://doi.org/10.1116/1.4935650
journal January 2016
Temperature induced change in the hysteretic behavior of the capacitance-voltage characteristics of Pt–ZnO–Pb(Zr0.2Ti0.8)O3–Pt heterostructures journal January 2010
There’s no place like Ohm: conduction in oxide thin films journal March 2014
Self-interaction correction to density-functional approximations for many-electron systems journal May 1981
First-Principles Study of Lead-Free Piezoelectric SnTiO 3 journal September 2008
Ferroelectric-like hysteresis loop in nonferroelectric systems journal September 2005
First-principles study of misfit strain-stabilized ferroelectric SnTiO 3 journal December 2011
Polarization reversal and capacitance-voltage characteristic of epitaxial Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 layers journal May 2005
Capacitance-voltage modeling of metal-ferroelectric-semiconductor capacitors based on epitaxial oxide heterostructures journal March 2011
Tip-enhanced photovoltaic effects in bismuth ferrite journal March 2011
First principles studies of SnTiO3 perovskite as potential environmentally benign ferroelectric material journal January 2009
On measurement of optical band gap of chromium oxide films containing both amorphous and crystalline phases journal December 1997
Self-Consistent Equations Including Exchange and Correlation Effects journal November 1965
Screening mechanisms at polar oxide heterointerfaces journal June 2016

Cited By (8)

Ionic Gating of Ultrathin and Leaky Ferroelectrics journal January 2019
Landau–Devonshire thermodynamic potentials for displacive perovskite ferroelectrics from first principles journal February 2019
Piezo–pyro–photoelectric effects induced coupling enhancement of charge quantity in BaTiO 3 materials for simultaneously scavenging light and vibration energies journal January 2019
Systematic tuning of the photo-dielectric effect in Ba(Al 1– x Zn x ) 2 O 4–δ journal November 2018
Atomic layer deposition of functional multicomponent oxides journal November 2019
Modulation of oxygen vacancies assisted ferroelectric and photovoltaic properties of (Nd, V) co-doped BiFeO 3 thin films journal June 2018
Tin titanate—the hunt for a new ferroelectric perovskite journal August 2019
Tin Titanate: the hunt for a new ferroelectric perovskite text January 2019

Figures / Tables (5)