Recipes for improper ferroelectricity in molecular perovskites

Hanna L. B. Boström, Mark S. Senn () and Andrew L. Goodwin ()
Additional contact information
Hanna L. B. Boström: Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory
Mark S. Senn: Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory
Andrew L. Goodwin: Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory

Nature Communications, 2018, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-7

Abstract: Abstract The central goal of crystal engineering is to control material function via rational design of structure. A particularly successful realisation of this paradigm is hybrid improper ferroelectricity in layered perovskite materials, where layering and cooperative octahedral tilts combine to break inversion symmetry. However, in the parent family of inorganic ABX3 perovskites, symmetry prevents hybrid coupling to polar distortions. Here, we use group-theoretical analysis to uncover a profound enhancement of the number of improper ferroelectric coupling schemes available to molecular perovskites. This enhancement arises because molecular substitution diversifies the range of distortions possible. Not only do our insights rationalise the emergence of polarisation in previously studied materials, but we identify the fundamental importance of molecular degrees of freedom that are straightforwardly controlled from a synthetic viewpoint. We envisage that the crystal design principles we develop here will enable targeted synthesis of a large family of new acentric functional materials.

Date: 2018
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-018-04764-x Abstract (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:natcom:v:9:y:2018:i:1:d:10.1038_s41467-018-04764-x

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/ncomms/

DOI: 10.1038/s41467-018-04764-x

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Communications is currently edited by Nathalie Le Bot, Enda Bergin and Fiona Gillespie

More articles in Nature Communications from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().