Polarization imprint effects on the photovoltaic effect in Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 thin films

Abstract

The polarization imprint along with the photovoltaic (PV) effect has been studied in Pt/ Pb(Zr 0.3 Ti 0.7)O 3 /SrRuO 3 ferroelectric capacitors. It is shown that the positive DC poling induces the imprint with a downward direction whereas the negative DC poling suppresses the imprint (i.e., rejuvenation). In the polarization up state, the imprinted capacitor exhibits degraded PV properties compared with the rejuvenated one. This may be because the imprint reduces the number of upward domains, thus lowering the driving force for the PV effect. In the polarization down state, however, the rejuvenated capacitor enters the imprinted state spontaneously. This rejuvenation-to-imprint transition can be further aggravated by applying positive voltages and ultraviolet illumination. It is proposed that the domain pinning/depinning, which are associated with the oxygen vacancies and trapped electrons modulated by polarization, voltage, and illumination, may be responsible for the polarization imprint and rejuvenation. Our study therefore sheds light on the correlation between the polarization imprint and the PV effect in the ferroelectrics and also provides some viable suggestions to address the imprint-induced degradation of PV performance.

Significantly improved piezoelectric performance of PZT-PMnN ceramics prepared by spark plasma sintering

“…26,27 Comparing the XRD results of CSed and SPSed samples, it can be found that the sample prepared by SPS contains higher content of T phase, due to the value of I(002)/I(200) of the T phase between 44 and 46 is 1 : 2, and the peak of the SPSed samples is closer to 1 : 2 here. [28][29][30] In addition, as shown in Fig. 1(g) and (h), the R-phase characteristic peak of CSed ceramic more higher than that of SPSed ceramic, indicating the more R phase shows in CSed ceramic.…”

“…It is generally believed that the coercive eld is related to the exibility of domain and domain walls, and the coercive eld of T-phase is generally larger than that of R-phase. 29 SPS ceramic shows higher E C (1.49 kV mm À1 ) than CS ceramic (0.92 kV mm À1 ). This phenomenon is consistent with their XRD conclusions, and the XRD of SPS shows more obvious T-phase.…”

The Microstructure, Electric, Optical and Photovoltaic Properties of BiFeO3 Thin Films Prepared by Low Temperature Sol–Gel Method

“…In recent years, the photovoltaic effect of ferroelectric materials, such as Pb(Zr,Ti)O 3 [6], BaTiO 3 [7,8] and BiFeO 3 [9,10,11], have attracted a lot of research for photovoltaic application. Among many ferroelectric materials, BiFeO 3 (BFO) is the most representative [12,13,14].…”

Ferroelectric photosensor network: an advanced hardware solution to real-time machine vision

“…Another key feature of the saturated loops is the negligible voltage offset, namely, the positive and negative coercive voltages are almost symmetric, suggesting that there is only small or even no imprint field. Because the imprint field typically originates from the defects 38,39 , its absence in turn verifies the high quality of our epitaxial PZT film. Besides, the absence of imprint field contributes to the symmetry of switchable photovoltaic responses 38,40 (to be shown later).…”