Room-temperature vertical ferroelectricity in rhenium diselenide induced by interlayer sliding
Fang Li1, Jun Fu2, Mingzhu Xue3, You Li1, Hualing Zeng2, Erjun Kan1, Ting Hu1(), Yi Wan1,3()
1. MIIT Key Laboratory of Semiconductor Microstructure and Quantum Sensing, and Department of Applied Physics, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China 2. International Center for Quantum Design of Functional Materials (ICQD), Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale, and Department of Physics, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei 230026, China 3. State Key Laboratory for Artificial Microstructure & Mesoscopic Physics, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
One variety of ferroelectricity that results from lateral relative movements between the adjacent atomic layers is referred to as sliding ferroelectricity, which generates an interfacial charge transfer and hence a polarization reversal. The mechanism of sliding ferroelectricity existent in van der Waals crystals is quite distinct from the conventional ferroelectric switching mechanisms mediated by ion displacement. It creates new possibilities for the design of two-dimensional (2D) ferroelectrics since it can be achieved even in non-polar systems. Before 2D ferroelectrics can be widely employed for practical implementations, however, there is still significant work to be done on several fronts, such as exploring ferroelectricity possibly in more potential 2D systems. Here, we report the experimental observation of room-temperature robust vertical ferroelectricity in layered semiconducting rhenium diselenide (ReSe2), a representative member of the transition metal dichalcogenides material family, based on a combined research of nanoscale piezoresponse and second harmonic generation measurements. While no such ferroelectric behavior was seen in 1L ReSe2, 2L ReSe2 exhibits vertical ferroelectricity at ambient environment. Based on density-functional theory calculations, we deduce that the microscopic origin of ferroelectricity for ReSe2 is uncompensated vertical charge transfer that is dependent on in-plane translation and switchable upon interlayer sliding. Our findings have important ramifications for the ongoing development of sliding ferroelectricity since the semiconducting properties and low switching barrier of ReSe2 open up the fascinating potential for functional nanoelectronics applications.
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