Switching a polar metal via strain gradients

Abstract

Although rare, spontaneous breakdown of inversion symmetry sometimes occurs in a material which is metallic: these are commonly known as polar metals or ferroelectric metals. Their 'polarization', however, cannot be switched via an electric field, which limits the experimental control over band topology. Here we shall investigate, via first-principles theory, flexoelectricity as a possible way around this obstacle with the well known polar metal LiOsO${}_3$. The flexocoupling coefficients are computed for this metal with high accuracy with a completely new approach based on real-space sums of the inter-atomic force constants. A Landau-Ginzburg-Devonshire-type first-principles Hamiltonian is built and a critical bending radius to switch the material is estimated, whose order of magnitude is comparable to that of BaTiO${}_3$.

References in corpus (25)

• Optimized norm-conserving Vanderbilt pseudopotentials
• The PseudoDojo: Training and grading a 85 element optimized norm-conserving pseudopotential table
• A ferroelectric-like structural transition in a metal
• Ab initio statistical mechanics of the ferroelectric phase transition in PbTiO3
• Metric Tensor Formulation of Strain in Density-Functional Perturbation Theory
• Theoretical aspects of Andreev spectroscopy and tunneling spectroscopy in non-centrosymmetric superconductors: a topical review
• Electric displacement as the fundamental variable in electronic-structure calculations
• Designing a robustly metallic noncenstrosymmetric ruthenate oxide with large thermopower anisotropy
• `Ferroelectric' Metals Reexamined: Fundamental Mechanisms and Design Considerations for New Materials
• Flexoelectricity from density-functional perturbation theory
• Surface control of flexoelectricity
• Artificial two-dimensional polar metal at room temperature
• Design of a multifunctional polar metal via first-principles high-throughput structure screening
• Unified ab initio formulation of flexoelectricity and strain-gradient elasticity
• First-principles theory of spatial dispersion: Dynamical quadrupoles and flexoelectricity
• Current-density implementation for calculating flexoelectric coefficients
• Quantitative analysis of the first-principles effective-Hamiltonian approach to ferroelectric perovskites
• First-principle study of octahedral tilting and Ferroelectric like transition in metallic LiOsO3
• Impact of surface phenomena on direct bulk flexoelectric effect in finite samples
• First-Principles Calculations at Constant Polarization
• Spin current in topologically trivial and nontrivial noncentrosymmetric superconductors
• Linear and nonlinear optical probe of the ferroelectric-like phase transition in a polar metal, LiOsO3
• Using high multipolar orders to reconstruct the sound velocity in piezoelectrics from lattice dynamics
• Electrical phase diagram of bulk BiFeO${}_3$
• Metric-wave approach to flexoelectricity within density-functional perturbation theory

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Epitaxy, exfoliation, and strain-induced magnetism in rippled Heusler membranes
• Flexoelectric control of a ferromagnetic metal
• Perspective: strain and strain gradient engineering in membranes of quantum materials
• Free carrier induced ferroelectricity in layered perovskites
• Spin-Phonon Resonances in Nearly Polar Metals with Spin-Orbit Coupling
• Emergent superconductivity in doped ferroelectric hafnia
• Engineering of Ferroic Orders in Thin Films by Anionic Substitution
• Tunable polar distortions and magnetism in Gd${}_x$La${}_{1-x}$PtSb epitaxial films