Ultrafast Polarization Switching in a Biaxial Molecular Ferroelectric Thin Film: [Hdabco]ClO4

• Published in: Journal of the American Chemical Society 2016-12, Vol.138 (48), p.15784-15789
• Main Authors: Tang, Yuan-Yuan, Zhang, Wan-Ying, Li, Peng-Fei, Ye, Heng-Yun, You, Yu-Meng, Xiong, Ren-Gen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 0002-7863; 1520-5126
• DOI: 10.1021/jacs.6b10595

Molecular ferroelectrics are attracting much attention as valuable complements to conventional ceramic ferroelectrics owing to their solution processability and nontoxicity. Encouragingly, the recent discovery of a multiaxial molecular ferroelectric, tetraethylammonium perchlorate, is expected to be able to solve the problem that in the technologically relevant thin-film form uniaxial molecular ferroelectrics have been found to perform considerably more poorly than in bulk. However, it can show good polarization–electric field (P–E) hysteresis loops only at very low frequency, severely hampering practical applications such as ferroelectric random access memory. Here, we present a biaxial molecular ferroelectric thin film of [Hdabco]­ClO4 (dabco = 1,4-diazabicyclo[2.2.2]­octane) (1), where a perfect ferroelectric hysteresis loop can be observed even at 10 kHz. It is the first example of a molecular ferroelectric thin film whose polarization can be switched at such a high frequency. Moreover, using piezoresponse force microscopy, we clearly observed the coexistence of 180° and non-180° ferroelectric domains and provided direct experimental proof that 180° ferroelectric switching and non-180° ferroelastic switching are both realized; that is, a flexible alteration of the polarization axis direction can occur in the thin film by applying an electric field. These results open a new avenue for applications of molecular ferroelectrics and will inspire further exploration of high-performance multiaxial molecular ferroelectric thin films.