Proton tautomerism for strong polarization switching

Sachio Horiuchi (), Kensuke Kobayashi, Reiji Kumai and Shoji Ishibashi
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Sachio Horiuchi: Flexible Electronics Research Center (FLEC), National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST)
Kensuke Kobayashi: Condensed Matter Research Center (CMRC) and Photon Factory, Institute of Materials Structure Science, High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK)
Reiji Kumai: Condensed Matter Research Center (CMRC) and Photon Factory, Institute of Materials Structure Science, High Energy Accelerator Research Organization (KEK)
Shoji Ishibashi: Research Center for Computational Design of Advanced Functional Materials (CD-FMat), National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST)

Nature Communications, 2017, vol. 8, issue 1, 1-9

Abstract: Abstract Ferroelectrics based on proton tautomerism are promising in low-field and above-room-temperature operations. Here seven organic ferroelectric crystals are examined to search for efficient switching of strong spontaneous polarization on proton tautomerism. Solution-grown crystals exhibit strong pinning of ferroelectric domain walls, but excellent switching performance is awakened by depinning domain walls under thermal annealing and/or repetitive bipolar pulses with a high voltage. Compared with ferroelectric polymers such as polyvinylidefluoride, the optimized polarizations are comparable or stronger in magnitude whereas the coercive fields are two orders of magnitude weaker. The polarization of croconic acid, in particular, breaks its own record for organic systems in increasing from 21 to 30 μC cm−2 and now exceeds those of some commercial ferroelectric materials such as SrBi2Ta2O9 and BaTiO3. Optimization reduces the discrepancy of the spontaneous polarization with the results of the first-principles calculations to less than 15%. The cooperative roles of proton transfer and π-bond switching are discussed by employing the point-charge model and hydrogen-bond geometry.

Date: 2017
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DOI: 10.1038/ncomms14426

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