Discipline: Nanoscience
Subcategory: Materials Science
Session: 2
Room: Park Tower 8216
Amrit Sharma - Norfolk State University
Co-Author(s): Bo Xiao, Norfolk State University, Norfolk, Virginia, USA ; Sangram K. Pradhan, Norfolk State University, Norfolk, Virginia, USA ; Messaoud Bahoura, Norfolk State University, Norfolk, Virginia, USA
The need for efficient energy utilization is driving research into ways to harvest waste-heat which is ubiquitous, abundant and free. Thermal harvesting is a promising method for capturing freely available heat and converting it to a more usable form, such as electrical energy. Thermal harvesting for low power electronic devices using ferroelectric materials is one of the emerging areas of research because they possess spontaneous polarization and exhibit excellent piezoelectric as well as excellent pyroelectric coefficients. These materials are unique as they only sense time-dependent temperature change to generate electric power. We have grown lead-free BaZr0.2Ti0.8O3 (BZT)/ Ba0.7Ca0.3TiO3 (BCT) multilayer heterostructures and studied the structural, dielectric, ferroelectric, pyroelectric and energy density characteristics. The BZT/BCT multilayer epitaxial heterostructures were grown on La0.67Sr0.33MnO3 (LSMO) buffered SrTiO3 (STO) single crystal substrate by optimized pulsed laser deposition technique. The large angle x-ray scans showed only diffraction peaks from the substrate and pseudocubic reflections (00l) from the multilayer heterostructure, confirming that these films are phase pure and epitaxial in nature. The atomic force microscopy (AFM) studies indicate that the surface roughness is low and that film growth is of high quality. The ferroelectric phase transitions have been probed above room temperature with relaxor behavior. The polarization versus electric field (P-E) measurement exhibits well-saturated hysteresis loop with maximum and remnant polarization of 138 and 64 µC/cm2, respectively. Solid-state, thin-film devices, that convert low-grade heat into electrical energy, are demonstrated using pyroelectric Ericsson cycles, and their performance is optimized by independently enhancing pyroelectric coefficient and suppressing dielectric permittivity in compositionally graded heterostructures. Our findings suggest that pyroelectric devices may be competitive with thermoelectric devices for low-grade thermal harvesting.
Funder Acknowledgement(s): This work is supported by the NSF-CREST Grant number HRD 1036494 and NSF-CREST Grant number HRD 1547771.
Faculty Advisor: Dr. Messaoud Bahoura, mbahoura@nsu.edu
Role: I did the following part of the research: - Synthesis of BCT, BZT targets by the solid state reaction route. - Fabrication of BCT/BZT thin-films with LSMO as a bottom and top electrode. - Material characterization: X-ray diffraction, Profilometer, TEM, AFM, I-V characterization - Measurement of dielectric properties (i.e. C-V, C-f, temperature dependent dielectric) - Measurement of ferroelectric properties from P-E loops. - Measurement of pyroelectric properties.