Lead-Free Hybrid Organic-Inorganic Ferroelectric: (3,3-Difluoropyrrolidinium)2ZnCl4·H2O

Zhu Yang; Shulin Jiao; Zheng Tang; Xiaofan Sun; Dong Li; Peng Chen; Yanzhou Lu; Wentao Zhang; Hongling Cai; Xiaoshan Wu

doi:10.1021/acs.inorgchem.2c04289

Lead-Free Hybrid Organic-Inorganic Ferroelectric: (3,3-Difluoropyrrolidinium)₂ZnCl₄·H₂O

Inorg Chem. 2023 Mar 13;62(10):4181-4187. doi: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.2c04289. Epub 2023 Feb 27.

Authors

Zhu Yang¹, Shulin Jiao¹, Zheng Tang¹, Xiaofan Sun¹, Dong Li¹, Peng Chen¹, Yanzhou Lu¹, Wentao Zhang¹, Hongling Cai¹, Xiaoshan Wu¹

Affiliation

¹ National Laboratory of Solid State Microstructures, Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, School of Physics, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, People's Republic of China.

PMID: 36848219
DOI: 10.1021/acs.inorgchem.2c04289

Abstract

Hybrid organic-inorganic ferroelectrics (HOIFs) have a wide range of applications in the optoelectronic field in terms of rich optoelectronic properties. Particularly, lead-free HOIFs have attracted extensive attention due to their environmental friendliness, low heavy metal toxicity, and low synthesis cost. However, there are few reports about Zn-based HOIFs due to their uncontrollable ferroelectric synthesis and other reasons. Here, we designed and synthesized a zinc-based zero-dimensional (3,3-difluoropyrrolidine)₂ZnCl₄·H₂O (DFZC) single crystal, which undergoes a phase transition from ferroelectric to paraelectric phase (space group from Pna2₁ to Pnma) at 295.5 K/288.9 K during the heating/cooling process. The systematic study shows that the ferroelectric phase transition is a displacive type. The ferroelectric hysteresis loop of DFZC was obtained by the double-wave method and the Sawyer-Tower method, which has a spontaneous polarization (P_s) of ∼0.4 μC/cm². This work reveals the strategy to design new zinc-based lead-free HOIFs for potential applications in optoelectronic fields.