Giant linear strain gradient with extremely low elastic energy in a perovskite nanostructure array

Although elastic strains, particularly inhomogeneous strains, are able to tune, enhance or create novel properties of some nanoscale functional materials, potential devices dominated by inhomogeneous strains have not been achieved so far. Here we report a fabrication of inhomogeneous strains with a linear gradient as giant as 10 6 per metre, featuring an extremely lower elastic energy cost compared with a uniformly strained state. The present strain gradient, resulting from the disclinations in the BiFeO 3 nanostructures array grown on LaAlO 3 substrates via a high deposition flux, induces a polarization of several microcoulomb per square centimetre. It leads to a large built-in electric field of several megavoltage per metre, and gives rise to a large enhancement of solar absorption. Our results indicate that it is possible to build up large-scale strain-dominated nanostructures with exotic properties, which in turn could be useful in the development of novel devices for electromechanical and photoelectric applications. Inherent elastic strains are useful to tune the physical properties of functional materials but it is difficult to build. Here, Tang et al . report a fabrication of inhomogeneous strains with a linear gradient as giant as 10 6 per meter in a BiFeO 3 nanostructure array grown on a LaAlO 3 substrate.