Antiferroelectric negative capacitance from a structural phase transition in zirconia
Abstract
Crystalline materials with broken inversion symmetry can exhibit a spontaneous electric polarization, which originates from a microscopic electric dipole moment. Long-range polar or anti-polar order of such permanent dipoles gives rise to ferroelectricity or antiferroelectricity, respectively. However, the recently discovered antiferroelectrics of fluorite structure (HfO2 and ZrO2) are different: A non-polar phase transforms into a polar phase by spontaneous inversion symmetry breaking upon the application of an electric field. Here, we show that this structural transition in antiferroelectric ZrO2 gives rise to a negative capacitance, which is promising for overcoming the fundamental limits of energy efficiency in electronics. Our findings provide insight into the thermodynamically forbidden region of the antiferroelectric transition in ZrO2 and extend the concept of negative capacitance beyond ferroelectricity. This shows that negative capacitance is a more general phenomenon than previously thought and can be expected in a much broader range of materials exhibiting structural phase transitions.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Pub Defense Publication
- Publication Date
- Mar 09, 2022
- Source ID
- 10.1038/s41467-022-28860-1
Entities
People
- Ahmad Zubair
- Anthony Arthur Gaskell
- Asif Islam Khan
- Dimitri A Antoniadis
- Dina Triyoso
- Jae Hur
- Jayakanth Ravichandran
- Josh Kacher
- Kandabara Tapily
- M. Hoffmann
- Mengkun Tian
- Milan Dopita
- Nujhat Tasneem
- Prasanna Venkatesan Ravindran
- Robert D. Clark
- Sai Surya Kiran Pentapati
- Sebastian E. Reyes-lillo
- Shimeng Yu
- Stefan Slesazeck
- Steven Consiglio
- Sung Kyu Lim
- Thomas Mikolajick
- Winston Chern
- Zheng Wang
Organizations
- Air Force Office of Scientific Research
- European Regional Development Fund
- National Fund for Scientific and Technological Development
- National Science Foundation
- Semiconductor Research Corporation
- State Ministry of Science and Cultural Affairs of Saxony
- United States Department of Defense