Related papers: Parity-breaking in single-element phases: Ferroele…
Polar metals, commonly defined by the coexistence of polar crystal structure and metallicity, are thought to be scarce because the long-range electrostatic fields favoring the polar structure are expected to be fully screened by the…
Ferroelectricity and metallicity cannot coexist due to the screening effect of conducting electrons, and a large number of stable monolayers with 1T/1T$^{\prime}$ phase lack spontaneous polarization due to inversion symmetry. In this work,…
Using first-principles calculations, we predict that tunable ferroelectricity can be realized in oxide perovskites with the Grenier structure and ordered oxygen vacancies. Specifically, we show that $R_{1/3}A_{2/3}\mathrm{FeO}_{2.67}$…
Polar metals, materials in which electric polarisation and metallicity coexist, are exceptionally rare because itinerant electrons screen long-range dipoles and favour centrosymmetric structures. Engineering polar textures in a conducting…
Metal-organic frameworks comprehend a wide class of hybrid organic-inorganic materials with general structure A$_m$BX$_n$, with $A$ and $X$ being organic molecules and B a metal cation. This often results in enhanced structural flexibility…
We study the interplay of structural and polar distortions in hexagonal YMnO3 and short-period PbTiO3/SrTiO3 superlattices by means of first-principles calculations at constrained electric displacement field D. We find that in YMnO3 the…
We study from first-principles calculations the ferroelectric structural phase transition of Pb$_5$Ge$_3$O$_{11}$ crystal. The calculations of phonons and Born effective charges of the paraelectric phase allow us to identify a polar…
Since its discovery a decade ago, "polar metallic phase" has ignited significant research interest, as it further functionalizes the switchable electric polarization of materials with additional transport capability, granting them great…
Superconductivity has been discovered in many materials including elements, cuprates and nickelates. Noncentrosymmetric superconductors get attention due to their physical properties results from spatial inversion symmetry breaking. Here we…
We present a strategy to design structures for which a polar lattice distortion induces weak ferromagnetism. We identify a large class of multiferroic oxides as potential realizations and use density-functional theory to screen several…
The ferroelectric nematic phase (N$_{\text{F}}$) has quickly become the most studied system in liquid crystal research. In this work, we investigate the origin of such polar structure by studying a compound for which the N$_{\text{F}}$…
Crystal symmetry plays a fundamental role in determining its physical, chemical, and electronic properties such as electrical and thermal conductivity, optical and polarization behavior, and mechanical strength. Almost all known crystalline…
At variance with structural ferroic phase transitions which give rise to macroscopic tensors coupled to macroscopic fields, criteria defining antiferroelectric (AFE) phase transitions are still under discussion due to the absence of…
In solids, charge polarity can one-to-one correspond to spin polarity phenomenologically, e.g. ferroelectricity/ferromagnetism, antiferroelectricity/antiferromagnetism, and even dipole-vortex/magnetic-vortex, but…
We present a simple theory for structural transitions in displacive ferroelectrics of the perovskite type. In our theory, the competition between the elastic energy cost for the displacement of the homopolar ion from the centrosymmetric…
For the past decades, the low-temperature phase of Ca$_3$Ru$_2$O$_7$ below the 48K first-order phase transition remains a puzzle with controversial suggestions involving metallic ferroelectric, orbital or magnetic ordering. Through analysis…
The emergence of ferroelectric mesophases in non-chiral liquid crystal (LCs) has sparked fundamental interest in the molecular mechanisms governing polarity. In this study, we investigate how terminal molecular groups influence the…
The discovery of fluid states of matter with spontaneous bulk polar order is appreciated as a major discovery in the fields of soft matter and liquid crystals. Typically, this manifests as polar order superimposed atop conventional phase…
In the archetypal antiferroelectric PbZrO3, antiparallel electric dipoles cancel each other, resulting in zero spontaneous polarisation at the macroscopic level. Yet in actual hysteresis loops, the cancellation is rarely perfect and some…
Intrinsic polar metals are rare, especially in oxides, because free electrons screen electric fields in a metal and eliminate the internal dipoles that are needed to break inversion symmetry. Here we use first-principles high-throughput…