Dresden 2026 – scientific programme

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FM: Fachverband Funktionsmaterialien

FM 12: German-French Focus Session: Materials Research in Polar Oxides – From Domain Engineering to Photonic and Electronic Devices I

FM 12.11: Talk

Wednesday, March 11, 2026, 12:45–13:00, BEY/0138

Inducing Strain Gradients in Transition Metal Oxides using Ferroelastic Domain Patterns — •Freya Watson¹, Aditya Singh¹, Katarzyna Sopinska¹, Daniel Chaney², Marin Alexe¹, and Marios Hadjimichael¹ — ¹University of Warwick, Coventry, United Kingdom — ²ESRF, avenue des Martyrs, 38043 Grenoble Cedex 9, France

Strain engineering is a powerful tool for accessing new and versatile properties of materials. The use of ferroelectric domain patterns instead of conventional substrates further allows for the modification of the properties of these materials using electric fields. PbTiO₃ is a ferroelectric and ferroelastic perovskite which forms a periodic in-plane and out-of-plane domain structure when deposited on (110)-DyScO₃ substrates, caused by lattice mismatch. In this work, we explore inducing strain gradients in metallic perovskite thin films grown on this PbTiO₃ domain structure. Using this approach we are able to effectively couple strain between heterostructure interfaces and produce large anisotropy in electronic transport and material properties, which are found to be tuneable by altering PbTiO₃ layer thickness, and thus domain period. The effects of this strain engineering are demonstrated by scanning probe techniques, microscopy imaging and 4-probe resistivity measurements.

Keywords: Ferroelastic domains; Strain engineering; Strain coupling