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 (HfO${}_2$ and ZrO${}_2$) 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 ZrO${}_2$ 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 ZrO${}_2$ 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.

References in corpus (6)

• The Origin of Ferroelectricity in Hf${}_x$ Zr${}_{1-x}$ O${}_2$: A Computational Investigation and a Surface Energy Model
• Antiferroelectricity in thin film ZrO2 from first principles
• Theory of antiferroelectric phase transitions
• Orthorhombic $ABC$ semiconductors as antiferroelectrics
• Phase Competition in HfO${}_2$ with Applied Electric Field from First Principles
• Antiferroelectricity in a family of pyroxene-like oxides with rich polymorphism

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Ferroelectricity in $\mathrm{Hf}{\mathrm{O}}_2$ from a chemical perspective
• Artificial ferroelectric-like hysteresis in antiferroelectrics with non-uniform disorder