| The overall goal of this work has been mainly to advance the understanding of the degradation in the response of piezoelectric thin films after they are deposited on substrates. To have better understanding of the difference in the response between free standing piezoelectric films and those deposited on a substrate, we calculated the normalized "effective" piezoelectric coefficients for BT/MgO, PZT/STO and ZnO/STO respectively. We also studied the impact on the effective coefficients due to the components of the bulk material's piezoelectric coefficients. After studying the clamping effects of the substrate, lattice mismatch, stiffness of the films and the substrates, we found that a periodic structure of piezoelectric thin films on substrates is a useful approach to overcome the degradation of the piezoresponse. Further, if non-piezoelectric islands are inserted between the periodic piezoelectric islands, there is an additional contribution that improves the piezoresponse of the piezoelectric films; we refer to this structure as a bi-island periodic structure. The bi-island structure may also be used as a hybrid device if the non-piezoelectric islands have special properties, e.g. piezomagnetism, ferromagnetism and shape memory. The hybrid device may thus be used for signal transduction, e.g. converting electrical signals to magnetic/mechanical/thermal signals and vice-versa, as well as energy harvesting. |
