Radiation-Hardened and Flexible Pb(ZrTi)O Piezoelectric Sensor for Structural Health Monitoring.

Piezoelectric sensors are excellent damage detectors that can be applied to structural health monitoring (SHM). SHM for complex structures of aerospace vehicles working in harsh conditions is frequently required, posing challenging requirements for a sensor's flexibility, radiation hardness, and high-temperature tolerance. Here, we fabricate a flexible and lightweight Pb(ZrTi)O piezoelectric film on flexible KMg(AlSiO)F substrate via van der Waals (vdW) heteroepitaxy, endowing it with robust ferroelectric and piezoelectric properties under low energy-high flux protons (LE-HFPs) radiation (10 p/cm).

Dynamically regulated electroluminescence via strain engineering.

Dynamic regulation of the light-emission wavelength has important scientific significance for developing new electroluminescent devices and expanding the application scope to the fields of lighting, display, sensing, and human-machine interaction. In this work, an electroluminescent device with a dynamically tunable emission wavelength is achieved based on the piezoresistive effect. The tunable range can reach up to 12 nm as the external strain increases from 0% to 0.

High-Temperature and Flexible Piezoelectric Sensors for Lamb-Wave-Based Structural Health Monitoring.

Piezoelectric sensors can be utilized in Lamb-wave-based structural health monitoring (SHM), which is an effective method for aircraft structural damage detection. However, due to the inherent stiffness, brittleness, weight, and thickness of piezoelectric ceramics, their applications in aircraft structures with complex curved surfaces are seriously restricted. Herein, we report a flexible, light-weight, and high-performance BaTiO:SmO/SrRuO/SrTiO/mica film sensor that can be used in high-temperature SHM of aircraft.

PET/Ag NW/PMMA transparent electromagnetic interference shielding films with high stability and flexibility.

Flexible transparent electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding materials in visual windows are essential for the innovation of optoelectronic devices. Herein, we demonstrate the fabrication of flexible EMI shielding films based on silver nanowires (Ag NWs) and polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA). The purified Ag NWs are uniform in size and morphology, with aspect ratio over 1000.

Two-dimensional magnetic interplay in the tensile-strained LaCoO thin films.

High-quality epitaxial LaCoO (LCO) thin films have been deposited on SrTiO (STO) substrates with pulsed laser deposition (PLD). We find that the LCO films undergo a typical ferromagnetic-paramagnetic (FM-PM) phase transition at ∼80 K. To understand the nature of magnetic phase transition, various methods, including the modified Arrott plot and critical isotherm analysis, were used to determine the critical exponents, which are β = 0.

Decoupling between metal-insulator transition and structural phase transition in an interface-engineered VO.

The coupling between the metal-insulator transition (MIT) and the structural phase transition (SPT) in VO has been at the center of discussion for several decades, while the underlying mechanisms of electron-lattice or electron-electron interactions remain an open question. Until recently, the equilibrium state VO is believed to be a non-standard Mott-Hubbard system, i.e.

Perovskite Transparent Conducting Oxide for the Design of a Transparent, Flexible, and Self-Powered Perovskite Photodetector.

Transparent and flexible electronic devices are highly desired to meet the great demand for next-generation devices that are lightweight, flexible, and portable. Transparent conducting oxides (TCOs), such as indium-tin oxide, serve as fundamental components for the design of transparent and flexible electronic devices. However, indium is rare and expensive.

Breaking Lattice Symmetry in Highly Strained Epitaxial VO Films on Faceted Nanosurface.

The lattice symmetry of strongly correlated oxide heterostructures determines their exotic physical properties by coupling the degrees of freedom between lattices and electrons, orbitals, and spin states. Systematic studies on VO, a Mott insulator, have previously revealed that lattice distortion can be manipulated by the interfacial strain and electronic phase separation can emerge. However, typical epitaxial film-substrate interface strain provides a very limited range for exploring such interface-engineered phenomena.

Evolution of the intrinsic electronic phase separation in LaErSrMnO perovskite.

Magnetic and electronic transport properties of perovskite manganite LaErSrMnO have been thoroughly examined through the measurements of magnetization, electron paramagnetic resonance(EPR), and resistivity. It was found that the substitution of Er for La ions introduced the chemical disorder and additional strain in this sample. An extra resonance signal occurred in EPR spectra at high temperatures well above T gives a strong evidence of electronic phase separation(EPS).

Influence of the vicinal surface on the anisotropic dielectric properties of highly epitaxial BaSrTiO thin films.

Epitaxial thin films of BaSrTiO (BST) were grown on the designed vicinal single-crystal LaAlO (001) substrates to systematically investigate the evolution of microstructures and in-plane dielectric properties of the as-grown films under the strains induced by surface step terraces. Anisotropic dielectric properties were observed, which can be attributed to different tetragonalities induced by vicinal LaAlO substrates with miscut orientations along the [100] and [110] directions with different miscut angles of 1.0°, 2.

Surface step terrace tuned microstructures and dielectric properties of highly epitaxial CaCuTiO thin films on vicinal LaAlO substrates.

Controllable interfacial strain can manipulate the physical properties of epitaxial films and help understand the physical nature of the correlation between the properties and the atomic microstructures. By using a proper design of vicinal single-crystal substrate, the interface strain in epitaxial thin films can be well controlled by adjusting the miscut angle via a surface-step-terrace matching growth mode. Here, we demonstrate that LaAlO (LAO) substrates with various miscut angles of 1.

Role of microstructures on the M1-M2 phase transition in epitaxial VO2 thin films.

Vanadium dioxide (VO2) with its unique sharp resistivity change at the metal-insulator transition (MIT) has been extensively considered for the near-future terahertz/infrared devices and energy harvesting systems. Controlling the epitaxial quality and microstructures of vanadium dioxide thin films and understanding the metal-insulator transition behaviors are therefore critical to novel device development. The metal-insulator transition behaviors of the epitaxial vanadium dioxide thin films deposited on Al2O3 (0001) substrates were systematically studied by characterizing the temperature dependency of both Raman spectrum and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy.

Nucleation dynamics of nanostructural TiO2 films with controllable phases on (001) LaAlO3.

Microstructure evolution and nucleation dynamics of TiO2 nanostructural thin films on (001) LaAlO3 substrates grown by the polymer-assisted deposition technique have been systematically studied with the increase of annealing temperature. Epitaxial anatase TiO2 phase with nanometer-scaled periodic surface strip patterns can be achieved when the sample is annealed at 900 ° C. It is also found that the morphology of the surface pattern is related to the ramping rate of the temperature during annealing.

Growth dynamics of barium titanate thin films on polycrystalline Ni foils using polymer-assisted deposition technique.

Polymer-assisted deposition (PAD) technique was developed to fabricate ferroelectric BaTiO(3) (BTO) thin films directly on polycrystalline nickel foils. The growth dynamics was systematically studied to optimize the single-phase BTO films with good dielectric properties. It is critical to pretreat nickel foils with hydrogen peroxide (H(2)O(2)) solution to form thin nickel oxide layers on the surfaces for the growth of BTO films.