Ab initio study on mechanical-bending-induced ferroelectric phase transition in ultrathin perovskite nanobelts

Based on first-principles calculations, we systematically investigated the structural, ferroelectric (FE), energetic and electronic properties of bended ultrathin PbTiO3 and BaTiO3 nanobelts in between flat sheet and nanotube configurations. It is found that both PbTiO3 and BaTiO3 ultrathin nanobelts can possess axial antiferrodistortive structural distortion (AFD distortion), and the magnitude of the AFD rotation angle is obviously determined by the bending curvature of the nanobelts. Meanwhile, spontaneous polarization can be retained in these single-unit-cell-thick nanobelts with contributions from the axial improper ferroelectricity and the radial flexoelectricity, which indicates that ultrathin perovskite nanobelts do not have a critical thickness. On the other hand, we found that the AFD distortion is stable and significant in PbTiO3 nanobelts while it is metastable in BaTiO3 nanobelts in comparison with the stable non-AFD structure without AFD distortion. This is due to the competition between AFD distortion and circumferential lattice extension in releasing the elastic energy in BaTiO3 material. Moreover, we found that the electronic structure and bandgap of the nanobelts can be tuned by the bending curvature, indicating potential control of transport properties by mechanical bending. Our results gave more insight into the inherence of improper ferroelectricity in low-dimensional perovskite ferroelectrics.