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    X-ray diffraction reveals the amount of strain and homogeneity of extremely bent single nanowires
    (Copenhagen : Munksgaard, 2020) Davtyan, Arman; Kriegner, Dominik; Holý, Václav; AlHassan, Ali; Lewis, Ryan B.; McDermott, Spencer; Geelhaar, Lutz; Bahrami, Danial; Anjum, Taseer; Ren, Zhe; Richter, Carsten; Novikov, Dmitri; Müller, Julian; Butz, Benjamin; Pietsch, Ullrich
    Core-shell nanowires (NWs) with asymmetric shells allow for strain engineering of NW properties because of the bending resulting from the lattice mismatch between core and shell material. The bending of NWs can be readily observed by electron microscopy. Using X-ray diffraction analysis with a micro- and nano-focused beam, the bending radii found by the microscopic investigations are confirmed and the strain in the NW core is analyzed. For that purpose, a kinematical diffraction theory for highly bent crystals is developed. The homogeneity of the bending and strain is studied along the growth axis of the NWs, and it is found that the lower parts, i.e. close to the substrate/wire interface, are bent less than the parts further up. Extreme bending radii down to ∼3 μm resulting in strain variation of ∼2.5% in the NW core are found. © 2020.
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    Exploiting flux shadowing for strain and bending engineering in core-shell nanowires
    (Cambridge : RSC Publ., 2022) Al Humaidi, Mahmoud; Jakob, Julian; Al Hassan, Ali; Davtyan, Arman; Schroth, Philipp; Feigl, Ludwig; Herranz, Jesús; Novikov, Dmitri; Geelhaar, Lutz; Baumbach, Tilo; Pietsch, Ullrich
    Here we report on the non-uniform shell growth of InxGa1−xAs on the GaAs nanowire (NW) core by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). The growth was realized on pre-patterned silicon substrates with the pitch size (p) ranging from 0.1 μm to 10 μm. Considering the preferable bending direction with respect to the MBE cells as well as the layout of the substrate pattern, we were able to modify the strain distribution along the NW growth axis and the subsequent bending profile. For NW arrays with a high number density, the obtained bending profile of the NWs is composed of straight (barely-strained) and bent (strained) segments with different lengths which depend on the pitch size. A precise control of the bent and straight NW segment length provides a method to design NW based devices with length selective strain distribution.
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    Self-stabilization of the equilibrium state in ferroelectric thin films
    (Amsterdam : Elsevier, 2022) Gaal, Peter; Schmidt, Daniel; Khosla, Mallika; Richter, Carsten; Boesecke, Peter; Novikov, Dmitri; Schmidbauer, Martin; Schwarzkopf, Jutta
    (K,Na)NbO3 is a lead-free and sustainable ferroelectric material with electromechanical parameters comparable to Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 (PZT) and other lead-based solid solutions. It is therefore a promising candidate for caloric cooling and energy harvesting applications. Specifically, the structural transition from the low-temperature Mc- to the high-temperature c-phase displays a rich hierarchical order of domains and superdomains, that forms at specific strain conditions. The relevant length scales are few tens of nanometers for the domain and few micrometers for the superdomain size, respectively. Phase-field calculations show that this hierarchical order adds to the total free energy of the solid. Thus, domains and their formation has a strong impact on the functional properties relevant for electrocaloric cooling or energy harvesting applications. However, monitoring the formation of domains and superdomains is difficult and requires both, high spatial and high temporal resolution of the experiment. Synchrotron-based time-resolved X-ray diffraction methods in combination with scanning imaging X-ray microscopy is applied to resolve the local dynamics of the domain morphology with sub-micrometer spatial and nanosecond temporal resolution. In this regime, the material displays a novel self-stabilization mechanism of the domain morphology, which may be a general property of first-order phase transitions.