Piezoelectric materials, which convert mechanical to electrical energy and vice versa, are typically characterized by the intimate coexistence of two phases across a morphotropic phase boundary. Electrically switching one to the other yields large electromechanical coupling coefficients. Driven by global environmental concerns, there is currently a strong push to discover practical lead-free piezoelectrics for device engineering. Using a combination of epitaxial growth techniques in conjunction with theoretical approaches, we show the formation of a morphotropic phase boundary through epitaxial constraint in lead-free piezoelectric bismuth ferrite (BiFeO3) films. Electric field-dependent studies show that a tetragonal-like phase can be reversibly converted into a rhombohedral-like phase, accompanied by measurable displacements of the surface, making this new lead-free system of interest for probe-based data storage and actuator applications.

We report a photovoltaic effect in ferroelectric BiFeO3 thin films. The all-oxide heterostructures with SrRuO3 bottom and tin doped indium oxide top electrodes are characterized by open-circuit voltages ∼0.8–0.9 V and external quantum efficiencies up to ∼10% when illuminated with the appropriate light. Efficiencies are at least an order of magnitude larger than the maximum efficiency under sunlight (AM 1.5) thus far reported for ferroelectric-based devices. The dependence of the measured open-circuit voltage on film thickness suggests contributions to the large open-circuit voltage from both the ferroelectric polarization and band offsets at the BiFeO3/tin doped indium oxide interface.

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BiFeO 3 thin films have been deposited on ͑001͒ SrTiO 3 substrates by adsorption-controlled reactive molecular-beam epitaxy. For a given bismuth overpressure and oxygen activity, single-phase BiFeO 3 films can be grown over a range of deposition temperatures in accordance with thermodynamic calculations. Four-circle x-ray diffraction reveals phase-pure, epitaxial films with rocking curve full width at half maximum values as narrow as 29 arc sec ͑0.008°͒. Multiple-angle spectroscopic ellipsometry reveals a direct optical band gap at 2.74 eV for stoichiometric as well as 5% bismuth-deficient single-phase BiFeO 3 films.

The interest in plasmonic technologies surrounds many emergent optoelectronic applications, such as plasmon lasers, transistors, sensors and information storage. Although plasmonic materials for ultraviolet-visible and near-infrared wavelengths have been found, the mid-infrared range remains a challenge to address: few known systems can achieve subwavelength optical confinement with low loss in this range. With a combination of experiments and ab initio modelling, here we demonstrate an extreme peak of electron mobility in Dy-doped CdO that is achieved through accurate 'defect equilibrium engineering'. In so doing, we create a tunable plasmon host that satisfies the criteria for mid-infrared spectrum plasmonics, and overcomes the losses seen in conventional plasmonic materials. In particular, extrinsic doping pins the CdO Fermi level above the conduction band minimum and it increases the formation energy of native oxygen vacancies, thus reducing their populations by several orders of magnitude. The substitutional lattice strain induced by Dy doping is sufficiently small, allowing mobility values around 500 cm(2) V(-1) s(-1) for carrier densities above 10(20) cm(-3). Our work shows that CdO:Dy is a model system for intrinsic and extrinsic manipulation of defects affecting electrical, optical and thermal properties, that oxide conductors are ideal candidates for plasmonic devices and that the defect engineering approach for property optimization is generally applicable to other conducting metal oxides.

Using spectroscopic ellipsometry, the room temperature refractive index and absorption versus wavelength of the ferroelectric antiferromagnet bismuth ferrite, BiFeO3, are reported. The material has a direct band gap at 442nm wavelength (2.81eV). Using optical second harmonic generation, the nonlinear optical coefficients were determined to be d15∕d22=0.20±0.01, d31∕d22=0.35±0.02, d33∕d22=−11.4±0.20, and ∣d22∣=298.4±6.1pm∕V at a fundamental wavelength of 800nm.

The reflection of an optical wave from a metal, arising from strong interactions between the optical electric field and the free carriers of the metal, is accompanied by a phase reversal of the reflected electric field. A far less common route to achieve high reflectivity exploits strong interactions between the material and the optical magnetic field to produce a "magnetic mirror" which does not reverse the phase of the reflected electric field. At optical frequencies, the magnetic properties required for strong interaction can only be achieved through the use of artificially tailored materials. Here we experimentally demonstrate, for the first time, the magnetic mirror behavior of a low-loss, all-dielectric metasurface at infrared optical frequencies through direct measurements of the phase and amplitude of the reflected optical wave. The enhanced absorption and emission of transverse electric dipoles placed very close to magnetic mirrors can lead to exciting new advances in sensors, photodetectors, and light sources. 2Magnetic mirrors or high impedance surfaces were first proposed at microwave frequencies 1 . An important advantage of these mirrors is that a transverse electric dipole placed close to the mirror surface is located at an antinode of the total (incident plus reflected) electric field and, hence, can absorb and emit efficiently 2 . In contrast, a dipole placed close to a metal surface experiences a node of the total electric field and can neither absorb nor emit efficiently. At microwave frequencies these exceptional properties of magnetic mirrors have been utilized for smaller, more efficient antennas and circuits [3][4][5][6] . Magnetic mirrors can also exhibit unusual behavior in the far-field, through the appearance of a "magnetic Brewster's angle" at which the reflection of an s-polarized wave vanishes 7,8 .At optical frequencies, magnetic behavior can only be achieved through the use of artificially tailored materials and, as a result, relatively little work on optical frequency magnetic mirrors has been reported thus far. Recent investigations of magnetic mirror behavior at optical frequencies have utilized metallic structures such as fish-scale structures 9 and gold-capped carbon nanotubes 10 . However, the metals utilized in these approaches suffer from high intrinsic Ohmic losses at optical frequencies. Alldielectric metamaterials, based upon subwavelength resonators, with much lower optical losses and isotropic optical response have been used to demonstrate fascinating properties in a number of recent investigations [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25] . In another recent work, magnetic mirror behavior was theoretically predicted for silicon dielectric resonators in the near infrared 26 . Although the reflection amplitude spectrum was measured in this work, no experimental phase measurements were achieved. In principle, this work is the same as our previous work 12 that only showed high reflectivity at the magnetic dipole resonance, which is a necessary but not...

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