High-temperature ferro-electricity in two-dimensional atomic crystal

Abstract

The absence of a high-temperature electric polarization at nanometer scale has blocked the rapid development of traditional ferroelectrics in many modern electric devices. Here we show that hydroxyl-functionalized graphene yields robust ferroelectricity with large electric polarizations, which can survive above room temperature. Significantly, the calculated ferroelectric polarization is about 6.6 μC/cm2, and the estimated Curie temperature is about 700 K. Moreover, such ferroelectrics are environmentally friendly materials, which are necessarily required in next-generation electric devices. These significant attributes not only endow two-dimensional organic ferroelectrics great potential of electric applications but also provide an important strategy to produce ferroelectrics with intriguing properties.