Photovoltaic effect of “ferroelectric” bananas

¹ Department of Physics, Zhejiang Normal University - Jinhua, 321004, China
² College of Geography and Environmental Sciences, Zhejiang Normal University - Jinhua, 321004, China
³ School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology - Nanjing 210094, China

^(a) wuzheng@zjnu.edu.cn
^(b) ymjia@zjnu.edu.cn

Received: 3 August 2018
Accepted: 11 February 2019

Abstract

Due to the existence of ferroelectric polarization, many ferroelectric materials can have excellent photovoltaic performance, which has been widely reported. However, many other materials have also been erroneously labelled as ferroelectrics based solely on the weight of a “ferroelectric” cigar-shaped loop curve. In a past report by J. F. Scott (J. Phys.: Condens. Matter, 20 (2008) 021001), this sort of minimal analysis has been widely debunked by showing that a clearly non-ferroelectric material such as ordinary bananas can also yield such a ferroelectric loop curve. In this work, we hope to extend his work by similarly showing that ordinary bananas can also exhibit a pseudo-photovoltaic response. Our hope is that future groups researching such materials may find our work helpful in distinguishing true photovoltaic and such pseudo-photovoltaic phenomena in ferroelectric and non-ferroelectric materials with high leakage.