title: Directionally tunable and mechanically deformable ferroelectric crystals from rotating polar globular ionic molecules.
abstract: Ferroelectrics are used in a wide range of applications, including memory elements, capacitors and sensors. Recently, molecular ferroelectric crystals have attracted interest as viable alternatives to conventional ceramic ferroelectrics because of their solution processability and lack of toxicity. Here we show that a class of molecular compounds-known as plastic crystals-can exhibit ferroelectricity if the constituents are judiciously chosen from polar ionic molecules. The intrinsic features of plastic crystals, for example, the rotational motion of molecules and phase transitions with lattice-symmetry changes, provide the crystals with unique ferroelectric properties relative to those of conventional molecular crystals. This allows a flexible alteration of the polarization axis direction in a grown crystal by applying an electric field. Owing to the tunable nature of the crystal orientation, together with mechanical deformability, this type of molecular crystal represents an attractive functional material that could find use in a diverse range of applications.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-0810, Japan.|Graduate School of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-0810, Japan.
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Harada
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-0810, Japan.
authors.forename: Takafumi
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Shimojo
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-0810, Japan.
authors.forename: Hideaki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Oyamaguchi
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-0810, Japan.
authors.forename: Hiroyuki
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Hasegawa
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-0810, Japan.|Graduate School of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-0810, Japan.
authors.forename: Yukihiro
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Takahashi
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Medicine, Yamaguchi University, Yamaguchi 753-8512, Japan.
authors.forename: Koichiro
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Satomi
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Medicine, Yamaguchi University, Yamaguchi 753-8512, Japan.
authors.forename: Yasutaka
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Suzuki
authors.affiliation: Graduate School of Medicine, Yamaguchi University, Yamaguchi 753-8512, Japan.
authors.forename: Jun
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Kawamata
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-0810, Japan.|Graduate School of Chemical Sciences and Engineering, Hokkaido University, Sapporo 060-0810, Japan.
authors.forename: Tamotsu
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Inabe