Unification of the best piezoelectric and photovoltaic properties in a single photoferroelectric material
UNIFY
Funders
Funded by the European Union (ERC, UNIFY, 101039110). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
Project information
Project duration
-
Funded by
Horizon Europe - European Research Council (ERC)
Funding amount
1 496 023 EUR
Project coordinator
University of Oulu
Contact information
Project leader
- Associate Professor
Other persons
- Jani Peräntie
- Doctoral Researcher
Researchers
Project description
Electronic devices and components are getting extremely miniaturized. To make the devices even smaller and ubiquitous in the future, it will be insufficient to just squeeze as many components as possible into a small space because there is a physical limit of the space and there will be inevitable interference between components if they are placed too close to each other.
This project will contribute towards solving the problem by fundamentally UNIFY (project acronym) two significant but contradictory components, piezoelectrics and photovoltaics. Piezoelectrics convert energy between its kinetic and electrical forms and photovoltaics (or optoelectrics) convert energy between its optical and electrical forms. They are widely used in modern electronics of energy, smart sensing, medical, automotive, space industries and so on. These two types of components have not been believed to be able to reach top performances simultaneously in the same component and, UNIFY is seeking to change this view. The project attempts to replace the ever-separate components with a single, universal one, where a success will revolutionize the field from a potentially fourth dimension – material composition and microstructure.
Project results
Balanov, V.A., Temerov, F., Pankratov, V., Cao, W. and Bai, Y. (2023), Filterless Visible-Range Color Sensing and Wavelength-Selective Photodetection Based on Barium/Nickel Codoped Bandgap-Engineered Potassium Sodium Niobate Ferroelectric Ceramics. Sol. RRL, 7: 2200995. https://doi.org/10.1002/solr.202200995
Front cover https://doi.org/10.1002/solr.202370031
- Important optoelectrical components such as photodetectors and color sensors rely on the semiconductor technology which, however, does not allow selective detection of incident wavelengths. This paper proposes a fundamentally different approach of using band gap engineered photoferroelectric ceramics to achieve filterless detection of both wavelengths and intensity of incident lights, simultaneously.
V. Balanov, J. Peräntie, J. Palosaari, S. Yadav, Y. Bai, Study on Influence of AC Poling on Bulk Photovoltaic Effect in Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-PbTiO3 Single Crystals. Adv. Electron. Mater. 2025, 11, 2400471. https://doi.org/10.1002/aelm.202400471
Back cover https://doi.org/10.1002/aelm.202570009
- Improving the energy conversion efficiency of the emerging bulk photovoltaic effect to the level of the mainstream, semiconductor-based photovoltaics is challenging in practice. This work steps forward in the journey of addressing this challenge by exploring the use of the AC electric field poling method to manipulate domain structures of ferroelectric crystals, and hence significantly enhancing the photovoltage and photocurrent.