A chiral switchable photovoltaic ferroelectric 1D perovskite

• Published in: Science advances Vol. 6; no. 9; p. eaay4213
• Main Authors: Hu, Yang, Florio, Fred, Chen, Zhizhong, Phelan, W Adam, Siegler, Maxime A, Zhou, Zhe, Guo, Yuwei, Hawks, Ryan, Jiang, Jie, Feng, Jing, Zhang, Lifu, Wang, Baiwei, Wang, Yiping, Gall, Daniel, Palermo, Edmund F, Lu, Zonghuan, Sun, Xin, Lu, Toh-Ming, Zhou, Hua, Ren, Yang, Wertz, Esther, Sundararaman, Ravishankar, Shi, Jian
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: United States AAAS 28.02.2020; American Association for the Advancement of Science
• Subjects: MATERIALS SCIENCE; SciAdv r-articles; Science & Technology - Other Topics
• ISSN: 2375-2548; 2375-2548
• DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aay4213

Spin and valley degrees of freedom in materials without inversion symmetry promise previously unknown device functionalities, such as spin-valleytronics. Control of material symmetry with electric fields (ferroelectricity), while breaking additional symmetries, including mirror symmetry, could yield phenomena where chirality, spin, valley, and crystal potential are strongly coupled. Here we report the synthesis of a halide perovskite semiconductor that is simultaneously photoferroelectricity switchable and chiral. Spectroscopic and structural analysis, and first-principles calculations, determine the material to be a previously unknown low-dimensional hybrid perovskite (R)-(-)-1-cyclohexylethylammonium/(S)-(+)-1 cyclohexylethylammonium) PbI . Optical and electrical measurements characterize its semiconducting, ferroelectric, switchable pyroelectricity and switchable photoferroelectric properties. Temperature dependent structural, dielectric and transport measurements reveal a ferroelectric-paraelectric phase transition. Circular dichroism spectroscopy confirms its chirality. The development of a material with such a combination of these properties will facilitate the exploration of phenomena such as electric field and chiral enantiomer-dependent Rashba-Dresselhaus splitting and circular photogalvanic effects.