Ferroelectrics with perovskite structure (ABO3), for example, lead titanate (PbTiO3), are the most studied ferroelectric oxides because of their versatile properties for use in thin film capacitors, electronic transducers, actuators, high-k dielectrics, pyroelectric sensors, and nonlinear optics. The studies on nanostructured PbTiO3 are limited, mainly due to the lack of facile synthetic techni...

Artificial PbTiO3/SrTiO3 superlattices were constructed using off-axis rf magnetron sputtering. X-ray diffraction and piezoelectric atomic force microscopy were used to study the evolution of the ferroelectric polarization as the ratio of PbTiO3 to SrTiO3 was changed. For PbTiO3 layer thicknesses larger than the 3-unit cell SrTiO3 thickness used in the structure, the polarization is found to be...

We examine the application of short-circuit electrical boundary conditions in density-functional theory calculations of ferroelectric thin films. Modeling PbTiO3 films with metallic electrodes, we demonstrate that under periodic boundary conditions of supercells, short-circuit conditions for the electrodes are equivalently satisfied in two repeated slab geometries: a PbTiO3/metal superlattice g...

A PbTiO3 crystal and Sr1 xBaxTiO3 lms have been studied by neareld scanning microwave microscopy (SMM). In the PbTiO3 crystal, dielectric properties and topography are obtained simultaneously. In Sr1 xBaxTiO3 lms, local variations and sample-to-sample di erences are observed. To quantitatively determine local dielectric permittivity and loss, we also carry out theoretical calculations on depend...

Heterostructured powders composed of microcrystalline PbTiO3 cores coated with nanostructured TiO2 shells were prepared by a sol–gel method. When exposed to visible light (l 4 420 nm), the heterostructured powder degrades methylene blue at a rate 4.8 times greater than PbTiO3, TiO2, or mechanical mixtures of the phases. The rate at which the heterostructured powder degrades methylene blue depen...

Using data obtained from first-principles calculations, we show that the position of the morphotropic phase boundary MPB and transition temperature at MPB in ferroelectric perovskite solutions can be predicted with quantitative accuracy from the properties of the constituent cations. We find that the mole fraction of PbTiO3 at MPB in Pb B B O3–PbTiO3, BiBO3–PbTiO3, and Bi B B O3–PbTiO3 exhibits...

In recent years, unidimensional photonic crystal-based biosensors have attracted significant attention due to their potential for label-free bio-detection of cells, proteins, and other organic molecules. These are based on alternating materials with different refractive indices a cavity region in which biomolecules can be injected. this study, we investigated numerically the optical properties ...

Using a first-principles approach based on density-functional theory, we find that a large tetragonal strain can be induced in PbTiO3 by application of a negative hydrostatic pressure. The structural parameters and the dielectric and dynamical properties are found to change abruptly near a crossover pressure, displaying a ‘‘kinky’’ behavior suggestive of proximity to a phase transition. Analogo...

Fast migration and efficient spatial separation of photogenerated charges in photocatalytic materials are indispensable to solar water splitting reactions. Here, we construct a three-phase heterostructure CdS/PbTiO3/TiO2 by selectively depositing CdS TiO2 at oppositely poled crystal facets PbTiO3 using single-domain ferroelectric PbTiO3. The has matching band edge alignments strong interfacial ...

BiFeO3 and PbTiO3 were introduced to a Sc-modified Pb(Fe2/3W1/3)O3 compound with strong cation order to improve the multiferroic properties. It is found that the degree of cation order decreases as the amount of BiFeO3 or PbTiO3 increases. As a result, the saturation magnetization deteriorates. Solid solutions with BiFeO3 show an increase in both ferroelectric and magnetic transition temperatur...