Unveiling the double-well energy landscape in a ferroelectric layer

The properties of ferroelectric materials, which were discovered almost a century ago¹ , have led to a huge range of applications, such as digital information storage² , pyroelectric energy conversion³ and neuromorphic computing⁴⁻⁵ . Recently, it was shown that ferroelectrics can have negative capacitance⁶⁻¹¹, which could improve the energy efficiency of conventional electronics beyond fundamental limits¹²⁻¹⁴. In Landau–Ginzburg–Devonshire theory¹⁵⁻¹⁷, this negative capacitance is directly related to the doublewell shape of the ferroelectric polarization–energy landscape, which was thought for more than 70 years to be inaccessible to experiments¹⁸. Here we report electrical measurements of the intrinsic double-well energy landscape in a thin layer of ferroelectric Hf₀.₅Zr₀.₅O₂. To achieve this, we integrated the ferroelectric into a heterostructure capacitor with a second dielectric layer to prevent immediate screening of polarization charges during switching. These results show that negative capacitance has its origin in the energy barrier in a double-well landscape. Furthermore, we demonstrate that ferroelectric negative capacitance can be fast and hysteresis-free, which is important for prospective applications¹⁹. In addition, the Hf₀.₅Zr₀.₅O₂ used in this work is currently the most industry-relevant ferroelectric material, because both HfO₂ and ZrO₂ thin films are already used in everyday electronics²⁰. This could lead to fast adoption of negative capacitance effects in future products with markedly improved energy efficiency