On the entanglement of electrostriction and non-linear piezoelectricity in non-centrosymmetric materials

Laurent Pedesseau (1) , Claudine Katan (1, 2) , Jacky Even (1)

1 FOTON - Fonctions Optiques pour les Technologies de l'informatiON
2 ISCR - Institut des Sciences Chimiques de Rennes

An extended and complete thermodynamical model of third-order electro-elastic coupling is proposed with symmetry analyses and density functional theory (DFT) calculations to evaluate consistently the various linear and non-linear coefficients. It is shown that in non-centrosymmetric materials, electrostrictive and non-linear piezoelectric phenomena are strongly coupled, except for materials crystallizing in a cubic lattice associated to the 432 point group. Thorough numerical results are given for GaN and AlN compounds in the Würtzite structure. Electrostriction dominates, but non-linear elasticity and non-linear piezoelectricity must be taken into account for strain evaluation whereas non-linear piezoelectricity yields a significant correction for electric field.

Mots clés: aluminium compounds; crystallisation; density functional theory; elasticity; electrostriction; gallium compounds; III-V semiconductors; piezoelectric semiconductors; piezoelectricity; wide band gap semiconductors

Domaines: Optique / photonique; Science des matériaux [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]; Matériaux; Chimie-Physique [physics.chem-ph]

Laurent Pedesseau, Claudine Katan, Jacky Even. On the entanglement of electrostriction and non-linear piezoelectricity in non-centrosymmetric materials. Applied Physics Letters, 2012, 100, pp.031903. ⟨10.1063/1.3676666⟩. ⟨hal-00664196⟩