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Flexoelectric and photo-flexoelectricity are scientifically intriguing and hold considerable potential for various applications such as soft strain sensing, photovoltaics, energy harvesting, etc. Among flexoelectric materials, freestanding ferroelectric thin films are believed to have huge flexoelectricity and tunability due to their excellent lattice regulatory freedom and sustainability to larger strain gradients. In this work, we demonstrated a freestanding BiFeO3(BFO) thin film-based soft strain sensor and explored their flexoelectric coefficient and flexoelectric photovoltaic effect under different strain gradients. Under different bending scales, the photocurrent of the thin film exhibits a step-like variation, indicating that the sensor can measure strain gradient with high sensitivity. These results show the potential application of freestanding ferroelectric films in flexible devices.

Abstract The deterministic creation and modification of domain walls in ferroelectric films have attracted broad interest due to their unprecedented potential as the active element in non-volatile memory, logic computation and energy-harvesting technologies. However, the correlation between charged and antiphase states, and their hybridization into a single domain wall still remain elusive. Here we demonstrate the facile fabrication of antiphase boundaries in BiFeO3 thin films using a He-ion implantation process. Cross-sectional electron microscopy, spectroscopy and piezoresponse force measurement reveal the creation of a continuous in-plane charged antiphase boundaries around the implanted depth and a variety of atomic bonding configurations at the antiphase interface, showing the atomically sharp 180° polarization reversal across the boundary. Therefore, this work not only inspires a domain-wall fabrication strategy using He-ion implantation, which is compatible with the wafer-scale patterning, but also provides atomic-scale structural insights for its future utilization in domain-wall nanoelectronics.

[Introduction] As an important thrust of China's "new infrastructure", internet data centers have ushered in opportunities for vigorous development and become new areas of energy use, putting forward higher requirements for the power supply level and capacity of the local distribution network. The innovative application of flexible transmission and distribution technology and key equipment makes the power supply and distribution system more intelligent, more flexible and more reliable, and more able to cope with the challenges brought by the large proportion of DC loads and concentrated high-load energy loads such as Internet data centers, and realize the construction and operation of Internet data centers more low-carbon, more efficient, more reliable and more economical. [Method] Firstly, the basic load requirements of Internet data center were discussed, the overall classification and performance requirements of internet data centers were analyzed. The application of flexible technology in distribution network was studied, with a focus on analyzing and comparing three types of technical routes: "rectification distribution, DC distribution, and AC-DC hybrid power supply and distribution". [Result] The paper provides provides tailored solutions for issues related to system reliability, stability, power quality, power efficiency and acceptance of new energy. [Conclusion] By summarizing the existing research results, flexible transmission and distribution technology is regarded as the core technology of building internet data center. Targeted data center control scheme should be studied from different aspects such as device and algorithms. After summarizing the research results of different aspects, the paper also looks forward to the practice and popularization of head-to-head transmission and distribution technology in internet data center.

Abstract Responsible for the most significant part of the world’s burning of marine fossil fuels and shipping emissions, global maritime container shipping is under decarbonization pressure. This paper develops an integrated framework of bottom-up emission estimation and upscaling pathway analysis (BEEPA) to measure global maritime container shipping emissions from 2015 to 2020, and project possible pathways toward carbon neutrality by designing typical decarbonization scenarios. The result shows that global total seaborne container emissions fluctuated from 2015 to 2020 with a maximum value of 264 Mt, and the average annual energy consumption is 77.7 Mt (heavy fuel oil-equivalent). Container traffic to/from Asian ports generate the largest volumes of shipping emissions, accounting for about 55% of the global total. Under the most stringent scenario, container shipping emissions peak in 2025 and then quickly decline to 19.6 Mt in 2050, nearing the International Maritime Organization’s goal of reaching net zero emissions by or around 2050. Energy efficiency improvements contribute to emission reduction in the near term, but the trade growth impact still predominates in the shipping emission increase. With the maturity of infrastructural development and technological innovation, the energy transition would be the largest contributor emission reductions over the medium to long term.

The controllable manipulation of polar topological structures (e.g. skyrmion bubble) in ferroelectric materials have been considered as a cornerstone for future programmable nano-electronics. Here, we present the effective creation and erasure of polar bubble states PbTiO3 (PTO) multilayers trigged by mechanical stress and light illumination, respectively. It was found that applying atomic force microscope (AFM) tip force can induced formation of nanoscale bubble domains from the initial monodomain state. Moreover, the created bubble domain can be eliminated by exposure to ultraviolet or infrared light illumination. The above results can be understood by modulation of depolarization screening charges and bias fields, as reflected by scanning Kelvin potential microscopic (SKPM) observations, whereby the flexoelectric effect from the tip force tends to remove the screening charges on top surface and modulate the bias field that favors the formation of bubble state while light illumination tends to recover the screen charges and favor the monodomain state. The results provide a good example for multi-field manipulation of polar topologies, which might create a new avenue towards the immerging new concept electronic devices.

Memristive neural networks have extensively been investigated for their capability in handling various artificial intelligence tasks. The training performance of memristive neural networks depends on the pulse scheme applied to the constituent memristors. However, the design of the pulse scheme in most previous studies was approached in an empirical manner or through a trial-and-error method. Here, we choose ferroelectric tunnel junction (FTJ) as a model memristor and demonstrate a physics-based predictive model for the pulse design to achieve high training performance. This predictive model comprises a physical model for FTJ that can adequately describe the polarization switching and memristive switching behaviors of the FTJ and an FTJ-based neural network that uses the long-term potentiation (LTP)/long-term depression (LTD) characteristics of the FTJ for the weight update. Simulation results based on the predictive model demonstrate that the LTP/LTD characteristics with a good trade-off between ON/OFF ratio, nonlinearity, and asymmetry can lead to high training accuracies for the FTJ-based neural network. Moreover, it is revealed that an amplitude-increasing pulse scheme may be the most favorable pulse scheme as it offers the widest ranges of pulse amplitudes and widths for achieving high accuracies. This study may provide useful guidance for the pulse design in the experimental development of high-performance memristive neural networks.

Recently, there is a surge of research interest in configurable ferroelectric conductive domain walls which have been considered as possible fundamental building blocks for future electronic devices. In this work, by using piezoresponse force microscopy and conductive atomic force microscopy, we demonstrated the controlled manipulation of various conductive domain walls in epitaxial BiFeO3 thin films, e.g. neutral domain walls (NDW) and charged domain walls (CDWs). More interestingly, a specific type of nanoscale domains was also identified, which are surrounded by highly conductive circular CWDs. Similar nanoscale domains can also be controlled created and erasured by applying local field via conductive probe, which allow nondestructive current readout of different domain states with a large on/off resistance ratio up to 102. The results indicate the potential to design and develop high-density non-volatile ferroelectric memories by utilizing these programable conductive nanoscale domain walls.

As a high-k material, hafnium oxide (HfO2) has been used in gate dielectrics for decades. Since the discovery of polar phase in Si-doped HfO2 films, chemical doping has been widely demonstrated as an effective approach to stabilize the ferroelectric phase in HfO2 based thin films. However, the extra capping layer deposition, post-growth annealing and wake-up effect are usually required to arouse the ferroelectricity in HfO2 based thin films, resulting in the increase of complexity for sample synthesis and the impediment of device application. In this study, the ferroelectricity is observed in non-capped dopant-free HfO2 thin films prepared by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) without post-growth annealing. By adjusting the deposited temperature, oxygen pressure and thickness, the maximum polarization up to 14.7 μC/cm2 was obtained in 7.4 nm-thick film. The fraction of orthorhombic phase, concentrations of defects and size effects are considered as possible mechanisms for the influences of ferroelectric properties. This study indicates that PLD is an effective technique to fabricate high-quality ferroelectric HfO2 thin films in the absence of chemical doping, capping layer deposition and post-growth annealing, which may boost the process of nonvolatile memory device application.

Robust, fast, and low-power hardware platforms are desirable for the implementation of real-time machine vision. Here the authors develop a computing-in-sensor network using ferroelectric photo sensors with remanent-polarization-controlled photo responsivities.

Abstract A pole‐converging X‐band low‐noise amplifier (LNA) using 130 nm CMOS technology is proposed. An on‐chip pole‐converging capacitor CPC is added between the gate and drain node of the common‐gate (CG) stage. The capacitor CPC combines with a noise‐reducing inductor L1 to converge poles into the desired band, which results in a pole‐converging effect and wideband performance. The proposed modified broadband simultaneous noise and input‐matching technique is adopted in triple‐cascode configuration to realize good input matching and a low noise figure (NF). Measurement results exhibit a flat maximum power gain of 17.6 dB from 8 to 12 GHz and a reverse isolation over 60 dB within the desired bandwidth along with an NF ranging from 1.5 to 3.6 dB. The LNA core dissipates 17 mW from 2.4 V supply, and the chip size occupies 1.1 × 0.9 mm2 including all pads. The simulated and measured results show good agreement from 8 to 12 GHz.

BiFeO3, a single-phase multiferroic material, possesses several polymorphs and exhibits a strong sensitivity to strain. Recently, emergent strain engineering in BiFeO3 thin films has attracted intense interest, which can overcome the confines of traditional strain engineering introduced through the mismatch between the film and substrate. In this review, we discuss emerging non-traditional strain engineering approaches to create new ground states and manipulate novel functionalities in multiferroic BiFeO3 thin films. Through fabricating freestanding thin films, inserting an interface layer or utilizing thermal expansion mismatch, continuously tunable strain can be imposed beyond substrate limitations. Nanostructured evolution and defect introduction are discussed as efficient routes to introduce strain, promising for the development of new nanodevices. Ultrafast optical excitation, growth conditions and chemical doping driven strain are summarized as well. We hope this review will arouse the readers’ interest in this fascinating field.

Ferroelectric topological defects show emerging exotic physical properties, which are important for future nanoelectronic devices. Here, the authors demonstrate conductive metallic conduction channels in two types of topological defects, namely vortex and center cores.

Ferroelectric tunnel junction (FTJ) has attracted considerable attention for its potential applications in nonvolatile memory and neuromorphic computing. However, the experimental exploration of FTJs with high ON/OFF ratios is a challenging task due to the vast search space comprising of ferroelectric and electrode materials, fabrication methods and conditions and so on. Here, machine learning (ML) is demonstrated to be an effective tool to guide the experimental search of FTJs with high ON/OFF ratios. A dataset consisting of 152 FTJ samples with nine features and one target attribute (i.e., ON/OFF ratio) is established for ML modeling. Among various ML models, the gradient boosting classification model achieves the highest prediction accuracy. Combining the feature importance analysis based on this model with the association rule mining, it is extracted that the utilizations of {graphene/graphite (Gra) (top), LaNiO3 (LNO) (bottom)} and {Gra (top), Ca[Formula: see text]Ce[Formula: see text]MnO3 (CCMO) (bottom)} electrode pairs are likely to result in high ON/OFF ratios in FTJs. Moreover, two previously unexplored FTJs: Gra/BaTiO3 (BTO)/LNO and Gra/BTO/CCMO, are predicted to achieve ON/OFF ratios higher than 1000. Guided by the ML predictions, the Gra/BTO/LNO and Gra/BTO/CCMO FTJs are experimentally fabricated, which unsurprisingly exhibit [Formula: see text]1000 ON/OFF ratios ([Formula: see text]8540 and [Formula: see text]7890, respectively). This study demonstrates a new paradigm of developing high-performance FTJs by using ML.

Voltage driven magnetic switching (VDMS) in multiferroic heterostructure is highly demanded for next generation energy efficient high-density memory (e.g. magnetoelectric random access memory) and spintronic devices. For practical applications in large scale integrated device, it is imperative to understand the VDMS behaviors in nanometer scale. In this work, we have investigated the effects of geometric and anisotropy parameters on 180° VDMS behaviors in a model multiferroic heterostructure system consisting of Co nano-ellipse on BiFeO3 films by using micromagnetic simulation. It was revealed that the switching behaviors can be greatly affected by geometric factors, whereby dimension shrinkage and rising aspect ratio of Co nano-ellipse can apparently increase the critical exchange coupling field (hDMcri-field) needed for triggering the VDMS, greatly reducing the watchability of VDMS. To improve the watchability, an external static perpendicular magnetoanisotropy (Kp) can be introduced to reduce the hDMcri-field, whereas too large Kp tends to reorientate the magnetization towards out-of-plane orientation. Moreover, a strategy was also proposed to assist the VDMS by applying an anisotropy pulse, which is able to reduce the hDMcri-field and expand the switching window (e.g. wider range of aspect ratio and overall dimension size) for both in-plane and out-of-plane VDMS. These results may provide some guides for further experimental modulation of VDMS for device applications.

In this study, controllable morphology evolution of hexagonal strontium ferrite (SrFe12O19) micro/nano-crystals has been demonstrated. Single phase strontium ferrite platelets with hexagonal morphology were successfully prepared by conventional ceramic process. In the hexagonal crystals, it is revealed that the anisotropic growth rate is changed, with the increasing of ball milling time, from relatively high rate along the direction (c-axis) to direction, leading to the morphology evolution. Moreover, the optimal saturation magnetization (MS) is 69.5 emu/g, which is intensely close to the theoretical value (72 emu/g). This study provides the direct evidence of the enhanced reaction activity induced by high energy ball milling in strontium hexaferrite platelets and the obtained SrFe12O19 particles are promising for the hard magnet application and the magnetoelectric electronics.