A lead-halide perovskite molecular ferroelectric semiconductor

• Published in: Nature communications Vol. 6; no. 1; p. 7338
• Main Authors: Liao, Wei-Qiang, Zhang, Yi, Hu, Chun-Li, Mao, Jiang-Gao, Ye, Heng-Yun, Li, Peng-Fei, Huang, Songping D., Xiong, Ren-Gen
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 29.05.2015; Nature Publishing Group; Nature Pub. Group
• Subjects: 639/301/119/1000; 639/301/119/2795; 639/301/119/996; Ferroelectrics; Humanities and Social Sciences; Hybrids; multidisciplinary; Photovoltaics; Science; Science (multidisciplinary)
• ISSN: 2041-1723; 2041-1723
• DOI: 10.1038/ncomms8338

Inorganic semiconductor ferroelectrics such as BiFeO 3 have shown great potential in photovoltaic and other applications. Currently, semiconducting properties and the corresponding application in optoelectronic devices of hybrid organo-plumbate or stannate are a hot topic of academic research; more and more of such hybrids have been synthesized. Structurally, these hybrids are suitable for exploration of ferroelectricity. Therefore, the design of molecular ferroelectric semiconductors based on these hybrids provides a possibility to obtain new or high-performance semiconductor ferroelectrics. Here we investigated Pb-layered perovskites, and found the layer perovskite (benzylammonium) 2 PbCl 4 is ferroelectric with semiconducting behaviours. It has a larger ferroelectric spontaneous polarization P s =13 μC cm −2 and a higher Curie temperature T c =438 K with a band gap of 3.65 eV. This finding throws light on the new properties of the hybrid organo-plumbate or stannate compounds and provides a new way to develop new semiconductor ferroelectrics. Lead-halide perovskite compounds have seen a considerable interest for their optoelectronic properties. Here, the authors discover a ferroelectric halide perovskite compound as an alternative pathway towards designing semiconductor ferroelectrics.