Enriquez Erik, Lu Ping, Li Leigang, Zhang Bruce, Wang Haiyan, Jia Quanxi, Chen Aiping
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley (UTRGV), Edinburg, TX-78539, United States of America.
Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico NM-87185, United States of America.
Nanotechnology. 2022 Jul 15;33(40). doi: 10.1088/1361-6528/ac5f98.
Multiferroic materials have generated great interest due to their potential as functional device materials. Nanocomposites have been increasingly used to design and generate new functionalities by pairing dissimilar ferroic materials, though the combination often introduces new complexity and challenges unforeseeable in single-phase counterparts. The recently developed approaches to fabricate 3D super-nanocomposites (3D-sNC) open new avenues to control and enhance functional properties. In this work, we develop a new 3D-sNC with CoFeO(CFO) short nanopillar arrays embedded in BaTiO(BTO) film matrix via microstructure engineering by alternatively depositing BTO:CFO vertically-aligned nanocomposite layers and single-phase BTO layers. This microstructure engineering method allows encapsulating the relative conducting CFO phase by the insulating BTO phase, which suppress the leakage current and enhance the polarization. Our results demonstrate that microstructure engineering in 3D-sNC offers a new bottom-up method of fabricating advanced nanostructures with a wide range of possible configurations for applications where the functional properties need to be systematically modified.
多铁性材料因其作为功能器件材料的潜力而备受关注。纳米复合材料已越来越多地用于通过将不同的铁性材料配对来设计和产生新功能，尽管这种组合往往会引入新的复杂性和在单相材料中无法预见的挑战。最近开发的制备三维超纳米复合材料（3D-sNC）的方法为控制和增强功能特性开辟了新途径。在这项工作中，我们通过交替沉积BTO:CFO垂直排列的纳米复合材料层和单相BTO层，利用微观结构工程，在BaTiO（BTO）薄膜基体中嵌入CoFeO（CFO）短纳米柱阵列，开发出一种新型3D-sNC。这种微观结构工程方法允许通过绝缘的BTO相包裹相对导电的CFO相，从而抑制漏电流并增强极化。我们的结果表明，3D-sNC中的微观结构工程提供了一种新的自下而上的方法，用于制造具有广泛可能配置的先进纳米结构，适用于需要系统修改功能特性的应用。
