Effect of Electrostatic Boundary Condition and Orientation on Ferroelectric Nanotube

Due to their piezoelectric properties and unique geometric shapes, ferroelectric nanotubes have potential applications in inkjet printing, drug delivery, ferroelectric random-access memory and micro-nano electronic devices. In ferroelectric materials, the domain structure was arranged in order by spontaneous polarization, and it might affect the macroscopic properties of ferroelectric materials, such as piezoelectric properties and dielectric properties. In our work, we use phase field simulation to study the effect of electrostatic boundary conditions and different orientations on the domain structure and physical properties of PZT nanotubes. It is found in the PZT nanotube that a highly symmetrical domain structure. In the meantime, (001) (101) (111) three different oriented PZT nanotubes grow on SrTiO3 substrates to study the domain structure evolution. We combined theoretical knowledge and simulation to analyze the formation and evolution mechanism of domain structure. Analyze polarization by stereo projection (SP) vector to determine the domain structure of PZT nanotubes in different orientations, which not only leads to the separation of ferroelectrics domain variants that can coexist, but also reveals they tend to stabilize to tetragonal-like phase. We found that the different orientation and electrostatic boundary could be used to discover the domain structures and tune the piezoelectric properties in PZT nanotube. These results deepen the understanding and provide a theoretical guidance for structures and properties of PZT nanotube.