Systematic {\em ab initio} study of the phase diagram of epitaxially strained SrTiO$_3$

TL;DR

This study uses density-functional theory to explore how misfit strains affect the structural and ferroelectric properties of SrTiO$_3$, revealing strain-induced phase transitions and the interplay between antiferrodistortive and ferroelectric instabilities.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive ab initio analysis of strain effects on SrTiO$_3$, highlighting the importance of AFD distortions in phase transitions and ferroelectric behavior.

Findings

Misfit strain induces a rich phase transition sequence.

Tensile strains promote ferroelectricity in orthorhombic phases.

Compressive strains induce ferroelectricity in tetragonal phase.

Abstract

We use density-functional theory with the local-density approximation to study the structural and ferroelectric properties of SrTiO$_3$ under misfit strains. Both the antiferrodistortive (AFD) and ferroelectric (FE) instabilities are considered. The rotation of the oxygen octahedra and the movement of the atoms are fully relaxed within the constraint of a fixed in-plane lattice constant. We find a rich misfit strain-induced phase transition sequence and is obtained only when the AFD distortion is taken into account. We also find that compressive misfit strains induce ferroelectricity in the tetragonal low temperature phase only whilst tensile strains induce ferroelectricity in the orthorhombic phases only. The calculated FE polarization for both the tetragonal and orthorhombic phases increases monotonically with the magnitude of the strains. The AFD rotation angle of the oxygen octahedra in the tetragonal phase increases dramatically as the misfit strain goes from the tensile to compressive strain region whilst it decreases slightly in the orthorhombic (FO4) phase. This reveals why the polarization in the epitaxially strained SrTiO$_3$ would be larger when the tensile strain is applied, since the AFD distortion is found to reduce the FE instability and even to completely suppress it in the small strain region. Finally, our analysis of the average polar distortion and the charge density distribution suggests that both the Ti-O and Sr-O layers contribute significantly to the FE polarization.