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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 February 2011
The nonlinear thermodynamic theory of epitaxial ferroelectric films has predicted several important strain-induced phenomena, which have been already observed experimentally. This justifies further development of this theory aiming at the better understanding of the structure/property relationships in thin-film ferroelectrics. To that end, a number of new theoretical studies have been performed recently. First, the thermodynamic formalism has been extended to epitaxial films grown on dissimilar substrates inducing anisotropic strains and a shear deformation in the film plane. Second, the polarization states and dielectric properties were calculated for polydomain Pb(Zr1-xTix)O3 films deposited on cubic substrates. Third, the effect of depolarizing field on the physical properties of strained single-domain films sandwiched between continuous electrodes was described. The results of these studies will be discussed in this paper.