Mixed anion control of enhanced negative thermal expansion in the oxysulfide of PbTiO.

The rare physical property of negative thermal expansion (NTE) is intriguing because materials with a large NTE over a wide temperature range can serve as high-performance thermal expansion compensators. However, the applications of NTE are hindered by the fact that most of the available NTE materials show small magnitudes of NTE, and/or NTE occurs only in a narrow temperature range. Herein, for the first time, we investigated the effect of anion substitution instead of general Pb/Ti-site substitutions on the thermal expansion properties of a typical ferroelectric NTE material, PbTiO. Intriguingly, the substitution of S for O in PbTiO further increases the tetragonality of PbTiO. Consequently, an unusually enhanced NTE with an average volumetric coefficient of thermal expansion of = -2.50 × 10 K was achieved over a wide temperature range (300-790 K), which is in contrast to that of pristine PbTiO ( = -1.99 × 10 K, RT-763 K). The intensified NTE is attributed to the enhanced hybridization between Pb/Ti and O/S atoms by the substitution of S, as evidenced by our theoretical investigations. We therefore demonstrate a new technique for introducing mixed anions to achieve a large NTE over a wide temperature range in PbTiO-based ferroelectrics.