In collaboration with colleagues from Switzerland and Japan, we identified for the first time the accumulation of charged defects at domain walls in ferroelectric BiFeO3. This finding explains the p-type hopping conduction at domain walls and thus represents the missing piece for explaining the intriguing electrical properties of domain walls in ferroelectrics. The study was published in Nature Materials with a 2015 impact factor of 38.89, which currently makes it one of the highest-impact scientific journals. The entire study was conceived and experimentally implemented at Slovenian research institutions (Jozef Stefan Institute and National Institute of Chemistry).
COBISS.SI-ID: 29936679
In the paper both electrocaloric and magnetocaloric temperature change was measured in bulk ceramic 0.8Pb(Fe1/2Nb1/2)O3-0.2Pb(Mg1/2W1/2) material. The work is the first experimental confirmation of the electrocaloric and magnetocaloric coexistence in a relaxor-ferroelectric and opens up new possibilities in the field of caloric cooling and is a result of collaboration of Slovenia with Poland and South Korea.
COBISS.SI-ID: 29513767
By understanding the influence of different thermal expansion coefficients of the thick film and the substrate and by controlling chemical interactions between them, we successfully prepared by screen printing a few 10 microns thick BiFeO3 films. We suggested an alternative way of poling by sintering the films at a temperature above the ferroelectric-paraelectric phase transition. The presence of a compressive strain gradient across the film thickness cooled from above the phase transition was experimentally confirmed and suggested to be responsible for the self-poling effect.
COBISS.SI-ID: 29643559
High-K dielectric tantalum-aluminium-silicon-oxide nanostructures were inkjet printed on indium-tin-oxide-coated glass as components for transparent electronics. By a suitable combination of solvents with different fluid properties in the ink the coffee-stain effect of the printed nanostructures could be avoided. About 40-nm-thick, flat and uniform transparent capacitors with good dielectric permittivity and a low leakage current density were fabricated.
COBISS.SI-ID: 29491239
Multilayer cooling elements of relaxor ferroelectric 0.9Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-0.1PbTiO3 (PMN-10PT) with internal platinum electrodes were fabricated by tape-casting and lamination in collaboration with the company KEKO-Equipment, Žužemberk. The highest elaectrocaloric temperature change was 2.26 K at 100 kV/cm at the temperature of 105 °C. The obtained result is in a good agreement with the values obtained in the bulk ceramic of the same composition with typical thicknesses exceeding 100 µm, but it was obtained at a much lower applied voltage, thus presenting another step towards application of EC ceramic materials in solid-state cooling.
COBISS.SI-ID: 29796903