Figure 5. Perpendicular E-field-induced microstructure and polarization variations for the [100]-poled PNR-ferroelectric composites.

(a) Microstructure evolution for the [100]-poled PNR-ferroelectric composites with applied perpendicular E-field along [010] at various temperatures. The colour bar denotes the angle between the polar vector of the grids and the [100] direction. (b) Simulated transverse PE responses for the PNR-ferroelectric composite, where the amplitude and period of the a.c. electric field are 1 MV m⁻¹ and 10⁵ time steps, respectively (see Supplementary Movies 1–3 for details of E-field-induced microstructure evolution). (c) Schematics for contribution I and contribution II of PNRs to the transverse dielectric response, where the orange regions represent PNRs, and the polar vectors of PNRs and ferroelectric matrix are shown by purple and blue arrows. The corresponding three-dimensional simulation can be found in Supplementary Figs 17 and 18, showing similar results to the two-dimensional simulation.