Jike Lyu, Saúl Estandía, Jaume Gazquez, Matthew F. Chisholm, Ignasi Fina, Nico Dix, Josep Fontcuberta, and Florencio Sánchez*. ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces, Article ASAP
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.8b07778
Conventional strain engineering of epitaxial ferroelectric oxide thin films is based on the selection of substrates with a suitable lattice parameter. Here, we show that the variation of oxygen pressure during pulsed laser deposition is a flexible strain engineering method for epitaxial ferroelectric BaTiO3 films either on perovskite substrates or on Si(001) wafers. This unconventional growth strategy permits continuous tuning of strain up to high levels (ε > 0.8%) in films greater than one hundred nanometers thick, as well as selecting the polar axis orientation to be either parallel or perpendicular to the substrate surface plane.