Issue |
EPL
Volume 135, Number 3, August 2021
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | 37002 | |
Number of page(s) | 6 | |
Section | Condensed Matter: Electronic Structure, Electrical, Magnetic and Optical Properties | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/ac2247 | |
Published online | 13 October 2021 |
Switching ferroelectricity in SnSe across phase transition
1 instInstitute of Solid State Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences - 2 Academician Ossipyan str., 142432 Chernogolovka, Moscow District, Russia
(a) honna@issp.ac.ru (corresponding author)
Received: 26 March 2021
Accepted: 30 August 2021
We experimentally investigate transport properties of a hybrid structure, which consists of a thin single crystal SnSe flake on a top of 5 μm spaced Au leads. The structure initially is in highly conductive state, while it can be switched to the low-conductive one at high currents due to the Joule heating of the sample, which should be identified as phase transition to the symmetric β-Cmcm phase in SnSe. For the highly conductive state, there is significant hysteresis in curves at low biases, so the sample conductance depends on the sign of the applied bias change. This hysteretic behavior reflects slow relaxation due to additional polarization current in the ferroelectric SnSe phase, which we confirm by direct measurement of time-dependent relaxation curves. In contrast, we observe no noticeable relaxation or low-bias hysteresis for the quenched low-conductive phase. Thus, the ferroelectric behavior can be switched on or off in transport through hybrid SnSe structure by controllable phase transition to the symmetric β-Cmcm phase. This result can also be important for nonvolatile memory development, e.g., phase change memory for neuromorphic computations or other applications in artificial intelligence and modern electronics.
© 2021 EPLA
Current usage metrics show cumulative count of Article Views (full-text article views including HTML views, PDF and ePub downloads, according to the available data) and Abstracts Views on Vision4Press platform.
Data correspond to usage on the plateform after 2015. The current usage metrics is available 48-96 hours after online publication and is updated daily on week days.
Initial download of the metrics may take a while.