Epitaxial Yttria-Stabilized Zirconia on Muscovite for Flexible Transparent Ionic Conductors

Abstract

The advantages of ionic conductors have attracted great interest worldwide because they can fit the requirements that standard electrical conductors struggle to meet. Yttria-stabilized zirconia (YSZ) is the most common ionic conductor for various practical applications. In this study, in order to bring ionic conductors into the field of soft technology, transparent YSZ films with superior mechanical flexibility were epitaxially grown on a muscovite substrate by pulsed-laser deposition. The epitaxial relationship between YSZ and muscovite has been well established, indicating a high-crystallinity thin film. The heterostructure of YSZ/ muscovite exhibits excellent ionic conductivity with great mechanical flexibility. The smallest bending radius of this heterostructure that can be achieved is ∼10 mm with excellent mechanical cyclabilty (>800 cycles) and stability (>10 5 s), serving as a new platform to fabricate highly flexible ionic conductors.

Strain‐Induced Distortions Modulate the Optoelectronic Properties of Epitaxial BiVO4 Films

“…BiVO 4 growth in the [001] direction is thus anticipated on YSZ(001). On top of this, since YSZ(001) grows epitaxially on Si(100), [29][30][31][32] ITO, [33,34] and mica, [35,36] the choice of YSZ(001) as the substrate makes it relevant as a possible epitaxial buffer layer in realizing a number of possible all-epitaxial photoelectrochemical (PEC) device configurations, ranging from monolithic m-BiVO 4 /YSZ/n-Si integrated PEC tandem devices, [37] to flexible PEC devices on mica. Figure 1a shows the typical X-ray diffraction pattern of the BiVO 4 films deposited on YSZ(001).…”

Flexible inorganic oxide thin-film electronics enabled by advanced strategies

“…There was no obvious change both in W rec and η after 10 4 bending cycles [67] . Furthermore, they replaced the BZT film by BaTiO 3 (BTO) film, which exhibited a high retention of ferroelectric polarization of 96.41% after 10 6 electric field cycling and 92.64% after 10 4 mechanical fatigue cycles at the bending radius of 6 mm, respectively [68] . These results demonstrate that the flexible dielectric capacitors have potential applications for flexible wearable electronics in wide-temperature and harsh working environments.…”

“…Generally, M-Mica has higher transparency, slightly better electrical properties and better flexibility than F-Mica, while F-Mica has better thermal stability than M-Mica, thus F-Mica is more suitable for the films which need higher annealing temperature for better crystallinity, and M-Mica is more suitable to increase the flexibility of films or devices. However, even though the advantages of micas enable the epitaxial layer to grow with its bulk lattice, it can hardly control the orientation of epitaxy layer, thus a thin buffer layer on the surface of mica or surface treatment for mica is usually needed [10,28,56,59,63,66,68,70,74] .…”

Heteroepitaxy of Co-Based Heusler Compound/Muscovite for Flexible Spintronics

“…After that various metals were studied for practical applications, including Pt, Ag, Cu, and Ti . From 2016, many functional oxides, such as MoO 2 , ITO, AZO, Fe 3 O 4 , and YSZ have been demonstrated epitaxially on muscovite for different applications. According to these results, there is a possibility of integrating the Heusler compound on muscovite epitaxially to open up a new avenue to flexible spintronics.…”