Antiferroelectric substances possess electrical characteristics that are beneficial for utilization in high-capacity energy storage solutions. However, scientists have recently uncovered that there is a specific size limit beyond which these materials lose their advantageous electrical properties and become ferroelectric.
As electronic devices continue to shrink in size, it is becoming increasingly crucial to comprehend how a material's properties can alter when reduced to small scales, says Ruijuan Xu, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering at North Carolina State University and the corresponding author of a related research paper.
The research studied antiferroelectric materials, which have a crystalline structure composed of repeating units that possess a positive and negative charge, referred to as a "dipole." These dipoles alternate throughout the structure, making antiferroelectrics unique. However, the research found that when antiferroelectric thin films become too thin, they experience a phase transition and transform into ferroelectric materials, hindering their effectiveness for energy storage. On the other hand, this transition presents new opportunities for memory storage applications.
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