Antiferroelectric hafnia down to the 2D limit
Antiferroelectricity is a material property characterized by alternating electric dipoles spontaneously ordered in antiparallel directions. Antiferroelectrics are promising for energy storage, solid-state cooling, and memory technologies; however, these materials are scarce, and their scalability remains largely unexplored. In this work, we demonstrate that single-crystalline hafnia, a lead-free CMOS-compatible material, exhibits antiferroelectricity under compressive-strain conditions. We observe antiparallel sublattice polarization and stable double-hysteresis in single-crystalline (111)-oriented epitaxial La-doped hafnia films grown on yttrium-stabilized zirconia and show that the antipolar orthorhombic phase of hafnia adheres to the Kittel model of antiferroelectricity. Notably, compressive strain strengthens the orthorhombic order in thinner La-doped hafnia films, achieving a very high ordering temperature of 850°C in the two-dimensional limit, highlighting hafnia’s potential for advanced antiferroelectric devices.
Authors
- Evgeny Y. Tsymbal (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6728-5480)
- Pratyush Buragohain (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6744-3082)
- Alexei L. Gruverman (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0492-2750)
- Pravan Omprakash (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5892-5255)
- Xiaoshan Xu (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4363-392X)
- Jordan A. Hachtel (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9728-0920)
- Miaofang Chi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0764-1567)
- Huibo B. Cao (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5970-4980)
- Rohan Mishra (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1261-0087)
- Guodong Ren (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6253-8314)
- Yu Yun (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4893-7156)
- Kartik Samanta (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3496-3238)
- Andrew R. Lupini (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1874-7925)
- Xin Li (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9657-5508)
- Haidong Lu
Institutions
- University of Nebraska–Lincoln (US)
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory (US)
- Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (US)
- Jaypee Institute of Information Technology (IN)
- University of Washington (US)
- Washington University in St. Louis (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Science
- Published
- 2026-09-24
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1126/science.ady5526
- Primary Topic
- Ferroelectric and Negative Capacitance Devices
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- National Science Foundation
- U.S. Department of Energy
- Intel Corporation
- Office of Science
- Division of Materials Research
- Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure
- Division of Electrical, Communications and Cyber Systems
- Basic Energy Sciences
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory