Tunable electroresistance and electro-optic effects of transparent molecular ferroelectrics
- Temple University, Philadelphia, PA (United States). Department of Mechanical Engineering and Temple Materials Institute
- Southeast University, Nanjing (China)
- Temple University, Philadelphia, PA (United States). Department of Chemistry
- Univ. of Maryland, College Park, MD (United States). Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Recent progress in molecular ferroelectrics (MOFEs) has been overshadowed by the lack of high-quality thin films for device integration. We report a water-based air-processable technique to prepare large-area MOFE thin films, controlled by supersaturation growth at the liquid-air interface under a temperature gradient and external water partial pressure. We used this technique to fabricate ImClO4 thin films and found a large, tunable room temperature electroresistance: a 20-fold resistance variation upon polarization switching. The as-grown films are transparent and consist of a bamboo-like structure of ($$2,\overline{1},0$$) and ($$1,0,\overline{2}$$) structural variants of R3m symmetry with a reversible polarization of 6.7 μC/cm2. The resulting ferroelectric domain structure leads to a reversible electromechanical response of d33 = 38.8 pm/V. Polarization switching results in a change of the refractive index, n, of single domains, $$\frac{Δn}{n}$$ = 0.3. The remarkable combination of these characteristics renders MOFEs a prime candidate material for new nanoelectronic devices. The information that we present in this work will open a new area of MOFE thin-film technologies.
- Research Organization:
- Temple Univ., Philadelphia, PA (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE Office of Science (SC), Basic Energy Sciences (BES) (SC-22). Materials Sciences & Engineering Division
- Grant/Contract Number:
- SC0017928; SC0010307
- OSTI ID:
- 1429329
- Journal Information:
- Science Advances, Vol. 3, Issue 8; ISSN 2375-2548
- Publisher:
- AAASCopyright Statement
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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