Tunable electroresistance and electro-optic effects of transparent molecular ferroelectrics

Recent progress in molecular ferroelectrics (MOFEs) has been overshadowed by the lack of high-quality thin films for device integration. We report a water-based air-processable technique to prepare large-area MOFE thin films, controlled by supersaturation growth at the liquid-air interface under a temperature gradient and external water partial pressure. We used this technique to fabricate ImClO₄ thin films and found a large, tunable room temperature electroresistance: a 20-fold resistance variation upon polarization switching. The as-grown films are transparent and consist of a bamboo-like structure of (2,1{macron},0) and (1,0,2{macron}) structural variants of R3m symmetry with a reversible polarization of 6.7 μC/cm². The resulting ferroelectric domain structure leads to a reversible electromechanical response of d₃₃ = 38.8 pm/V. Polarization switching results in a change of the refractive index, n, of single domains, nn=0.3. The remarkable combination of these characteristics renders MOFEs a prime candidate material for new nanoelectronic devices. The information that we present in this work will open a new area of MOFE thin-film technologies.