Traditional ferroelectrics undergo thermally-induced phase transitions whereby their structural symmetry increases. The associated higher-symmetry structure is dubbed {\em paraelectric}. Ferroelectric transition metal dichalcogenide bilayers have been recently shown to become paraelectric, but not much has been said of the atomistic configuration of such a phase. As discovered through numerical calculations that include molecular dynamics here, their paraelectricity can only be ascribed to a time average of ferroelectric phases with opposing intrinsic polarizations, whose switching requires macroscopically large areas to slip in unison.
@article{arxiv.2209.14437,
title = {Slippery paraelectric transition metal dichalcogenide bilayers},
author = {Juan M. Marmolejo-Tejada and Joseph E. Roll and Shiva Prasad Poudel and Salvador Barraza-Lopez and Martin A. Mosquera},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2209.14437},
year = {2022}
}