Reversible flexoelectric domain engineering at the nanoscale in van der Waals ferroelectrics.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 38811549.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-48892-z and PMC identifier 11136971.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
The universal flexoelectric effect in solids provides a mechanical pathway for controlling electric polarization in ultrathin ferroelectrics, eliminating potential material breakdown from a giant electric field at the nanoscale. One challenge of this approach is arbitrary implementation, which is strongly hindered by one-way switching capability. Here, utilizing the innate flexibility of van der Waals materials, we demonstrate that ferroelectric polarization and domain structures can be mechanically, reversibly, and arbitrarily switched in two-dimensional CuInP2S6 via the nano-tip imprinting technique. The bidirectional flexoelectric control is attributed to the extended tip-induced deformation in two-dimensional systems with innate flexibility at the atomic scale. By employing an elastic substrate, artificial ferroelectric nanodomains with lateral sizes as small as ~80 nm are noninvasively generated in an area of 1 μm2, equal to a density of 31.4 Gbit/in2. Our results highlight the potential applications of van der Waals ferroelectrics in data storage and flexoelectronics.