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 ImClO(4) 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 1,0) and (1,0,2) structural variants of R3m symmetry with a reversible polarization of 6.7 mu C/cm(2). The resulting ferroelectric domain structure leads to a reversible electromechanical response of d(33) = 38.8 pm/V. Polarization switching results in a change of the refractive index, n, of single domains, Delta n/n = 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.