Liquid-matter relaxor ferroelectrics by design.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 41125581.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-025-64421-y and PMC identifier 12546823.
- Licence recorded as CC BY-NC-ND.
- Because redistribution is not established, this page shows the abstract only. Follow the links below for the full text.
Abstract
Knowing that traditional relaxor ferroelectrics stem from crystalline materials, one may ask whether they stabilize the liquid-matter analogy. The perspective is challenging and may enable a generic design of fluidic and flexible relaxor ferroelectrics. Here, we unveil a novel polar matter state, dubbed the nematic relaxor ferroelectric, by artificially introducing polar nanoregions with nematicity into a dielectric nematic environment. We observe clear signatures of a nematic relaxor, which exhibits a high field-induced polarization of 1.1 μC·cm<sup>-2</sup> at 5 V·μm<sup>-1</sup>, over a wide temperature range (>30 K). The relaxor demonstrates two regimes: (1) stable relaxor against high electric fields (> 5 V·μm<sup>-1</sup>) at high temperatures over a 30 K range; (2) relaxor with a field-induced transition to a ferroelectric state at low temperatures. Based on the Landau-Ginzburg-Devonshire theory, we reconstruct free-energy landscapes from the electric field vs polarization curves. We observe a continuous transformation of energy landscapes from a double-well shape to a single-well shape, characterized by a broadening of the energy bottom, corresponding to a shift from nematic ferroelectrics to nematic relaxors with significant polarization fluctuations.