Bipolar loop-like non-volatile strain in the (001)-oriented Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-PbTiO3 single crystals.

Strain has been widely used to manipulate the properties of various kinds of materials, such as ferroelectrics, semiconductors, superconductors, magnetic materials, and "strain engineering" has become a very active field. For strain-based information storage, the non-volatile strain is very useful and highly desired. However, in most cases, the strain induced by converse piezoelectric effect is volatile. In this work, we report a non-volatile strain in the (001)-oriented Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-PbTiO3 single crystals and demonstrate an approach to measure the non-volatile strain. A bipolar loop-like S-E curve is revealed and a mechanism involving 109° ferroelastic domain switching is proposed. The non-volatile high and low strain states should be significant for applications in information storage.