Abstract
Antiferroelectric materials have seen a resurgence of interest because of proposed applications in a number of energy-efficient technologies. Unfortunately, relatively few families of antiferroelectric materials have been identified, precluding many proposed applications. Here, we propose a design strategy for the construction of antiferroelectric materials using interfacial electrostatic engineering. We begin with a ferroelectric material with one of the highest known bulk polarizations, BiFeO3. By confining thin layers of BiFeO3 in a dielectric matrix, we show that a metastable antiferroelectric structure can be induced. Application of an electric field reversibly switches between this new phase and a ferroelectric state. The use of electrostatic confinement provides an untapped pathway for the design of engineered antiferroelectric materials with large and potentially coupled responses.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | eabg5860 |
| Journal | Science Advances |
| Volume | 8 |
| Issue number | 5 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Feb 2022 |
Funding
We acknowledge discussions with C. Ophus, J. Ciston, and P. Paruch and assistance in the ion bombardment from S. Saremi. Funding was primarily provided by the Army Research Office under grants W911NF-16-1-0315 and W911NF-21-2-0162. B.F.G., Q.N.M., and N.A.S. acknowledge financial support from ETH Zürich and the Koerber Foundation. Computational resources for DFT were provided by ETH Zürich and the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS), project ID no. s889. Y.-T.S. and D.A.M. acknowledge support by the Department of Defense, Air Force Office of Scientific Research under award FA9550-18-1-0480. B.H.G. and L.F.K. acknowledge support by the Department of Defense, Air Force Office of Scientific Research under award FA9550-16-1-0305. Substrate preparation was performed, in part, at the Cornell NanoScale Facility, a member of the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI), which is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF; grant NNCI-2025233). The electron microscopy imaging studies were performed at the Molecular Foundry, supported by the Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences (BES), of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) under contract no. DE-AC02-05CH11231. The electron spectroscopy studies were performed at the Cornell Center for Materials Research, an NSF Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers program (DMR-1719875). The Cornell FEI Titan Themis 300 was acquired through NSF-MRI-1429155, with additional support from Cornell University, the Weill Institute, and the Kavli Institute at Cornell. J.A.M. acknowledges the support from a UC President's Postdoctoral Fellowship. The phase-field simulation efforts at Penn State (C.D. and L.-Q.C.) were supported by the U.S. DOE, Office of Science, Office of BES, under award number DE-SC-0012375. DF-TEM analysis by C.T.N. was supported by the U.S. DOE, Office of Science, BES, Materials Sciences and