Artificial antiferroelectrics

When surrounding a ferroelectric by dielectric layers, a competition between the polar distortion and the depolarizing field arises, often resulting in a rupture of the ferroelectric into domains with opposite polarization. Such system can be considered antipolar and can switch into a polar state under an electric field, and hence responds as an antiferroelectric.

In this work we study the antiferroelectric-like response of PbTiO₃/SrTiO₃ superlattices by means of high-throughput second-principles calculations. Check out the parallel coordinates plot showing the resulting database. The plot is interactive: you can change the column ordering and highlight a range of values in each column. This type of plots help to quickly identify correlations among the superlattice parameters and optimal energy-storing performance at a given applied field (see article for detailed description of each column and even more of these interactive plots).

For more details see:

Ferroelectric/paraelectric superlattices for energy storage, H. Aramberri, N. Fedorova and J. Íñiguez, Science Advances 8, eabn4880 (2022). Preprint available in arXiV 2112.00745.