All-Inorganic Flexible (K, Na)NbO3-Based Lead-Free Piezoelectric Thin Films Spin-Coated on Metallic Foils

Flexible piezoelectric thin films are raising interest in energy harvesting and wearable electronics, although their direct fabrication is challenging in the selection of substrates and thermal processing. In this work, we developed direct fabrication of flexible lead-free (K, Na)NbO3 (KNN)-based piezoelectric films on commercially available metallic foils by sol-gel processing. Stainless steel and platinum foils are selected as flexible substrates because of their good thermal stability, robust flexibility, and cost-efficiency. The sol-gel-processed KNN-based thin films on both of the metallic foils show good flexibility, with the bending radii reaching +/- 3 mm. The flexible thin films grown on stainless steel and platinum foils present high breakdown electric fields that reach 1760 and 2530 kV/cm, respectively, resulting from the fine-grained dense structure, limited leakage current density, and suppressed mobility of charged carriers. Improved effective piezoelectric coefficient d(33, eff)* (75.4 pm/V) with a slight decrease after bending was obtained in the flexible thin films on Pt when compared to their rigid counterparts. The flexible lead-free piezoelectric thin films with combined high breakdown electric fields and piezoelectric and energy storage properties may pave the way for integrating KNN-based multifunctional thin films into flexible electronics.

Automated summary

Flexible lead-free (K, Na)NbO3 (KNN)-based piezoelectric thin films were directly fabricated on commercially available metallic foils through sol-gel processing, showing good flexibility and high breakdown electric fields. The flexible thin films on platinum exhibited slightly decreased effective piezoelectric coefficient after bending, but still maintained high overall performance.