Direct measurement of ferroelectric polarization in a tunable semimetal
10.1038/s41467-021-25587-3
Crossref journal-article
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Nature Communications (297)
Abstract

AbstractFerroelectricity, the electrostatic counterpart to ferromagnetism, has long been thought to be incompatible with metallicity due to screening of electric dipoles and external electric fields by itinerant charges. Recent measurements, however, demonstrated signatures of ferroelectric switching in the electrical conductance of bilayers and trilayers of WTe2, a semimetallic transition metal dichalcogenide with broken inversion symmetry. An especially promising aspect of this system is that the density of electrons and holes can be continuously tuned by an external gate voltage. This degree of freedom enables measurement of the spontaneous polarization as free carriers are added to the system. Here we employ capacitive sensing in dual-gated mesoscopic devices of bilayer WTe2 to directly measure the spontaneous polarization in the metallic state and quantify the effect of free carriers on the polarization in the conduction and valence bands, separately. We compare our results to a low-energy model for the electronic bands and identify the layer-polarized states that contribute to transport and polarization simultaneously. Bilayer WTe2 is thus shown to be a fully tunable ferroelectric metal and an ideal platform for exploring polar ordering, ferroelectric transitions, and applications in the presence of free carriers.

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de la Barrera, S. C., Cao, Q., Gao, Y., Gao, Y., Bheemarasetty, V. S., Yan, J., Mandrus, D. G., Zhu, W., Xiao, D., & Hunt, B. M. (2021). Direct measurement of ferroelectric polarization in a tunable semimetal. Nature Communications, 12(1).

Authors 10
  1. Sergio C. de la Barrera (first)
  2. Qingrui Cao (additional)
  3. Yang Gao (additional)
  4. Yuan Gao (additional)
  5. Vineetha S. Bheemarasetty (additional)
  6. Jiaqiang Yan (additional)
  7. David G. Mandrus (additional)
  8. Wenguang Zhu (additional)
  9. Di Xiao (additional)
  10. Benjamin M. Hunt (additional)
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Dates
Type When
Created 3 years, 11 months ago (Sept. 6, 2021, 6:04 a.m.)
Deposited 2 years, 8 months ago (Dec. 2, 2022, 9:18 a.m.)
Indexed 3 days, 16 hours ago (Aug. 23, 2025, 9:51 p.m.)
Issued 3 years, 11 months ago (Sept. 6, 2021)
Published 3 years, 11 months ago (Sept. 6, 2021)
Published Online 3 years, 11 months ago (Sept. 6, 2021)
Funders 1
  1. U.S. Department of Energy 10.13039/100000015

    Region: Americas

    gov (National government)

    Labels8
    1. Energy Department
    2. Department of Energy
    3. United States Department of Energy
    4. ENERGY.GOV
    5. US Department of Energy
    6. USDOE
    7. DOE
    8. USADOE
    Awards1
    1. DE-SC0018115

@article{de_la_Barrera_2021, title={Direct measurement of ferroelectric polarization in a tunable semimetal}, volume={12}, ISSN={2041-1723}, url={http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-25587-3}, DOI={10.1038/s41467-021-25587-3}, number={1}, journal={Nature Communications}, publisher={Springer Science and Business Media LLC}, author={de la Barrera, Sergio C. and Cao, Qingrui and Gao, Yang and Gao, Yuan and Bheemarasetty, Vineetha S. and Yan, Jiaqiang and Mandrus, David G. and Zhu, Wenguang and Xiao, Di and Hunt, Benjamin M.}, year={2021}, month=sep }