Induced Giant Piezoelectricity in Centrosymmetric Oxides

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that applying an electric field to centrosymmetric oxides can induce giant piezoelectric responses by rearranging oxygen vacancies, overcoming the traditional symmetry restrictions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel method to induce large piezoelectric effects in centrosymmetric materials through electric field-driven oxygen vacancy rearrangement.

Findings

Achieved d33 ~200,000 pm/V in Gd-doped CeO2-x films

Giant piezoelectric response exceeds known lead-based materials

Method enables environmentally friendly piezoelectric material design

Abstract

Piezoelectrics are materials that linearly deform in response to an applied electric field. As a fundamental prerequisite, piezoelectric material must possess a non centrosymmetric crystal structure. For more than a century, this remains the major obstacle for finding new piezoelectric materials. We circumvent this limitation by breaking the crystallographic symmetry, and inducing large and sustainable piezoelectric effects in centrosymmetric materials by electric field induced rearrangement of oxygen vacancies Surprisingly, the results show the generation of extraordinarily large piezoelectric responses d33 ~200,000 pm/V), in cubic fluorite Gd-doped CeO2-x films, which is two orders of magnitude larger than in the presently best known lead based piezoelectric relaxor ferroelectric oxide. These findings open opportunities to design new piezoelectric materials from environmentally friendly centrosymmetric ones.