2D ferroelectricity accompanying antiferro-orbital order in semi-metallic WTe$_2$
Fuente:
arXiv
Saved in:
| Main Authors: | , , |
|---|---|
| Format: | Preprint |
| Published: |
2025
|
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | |
| Tags: |
Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
|
| _version_ | 1866909703744782336 |
|---|---|
| author | Gu, Fangyuan Jiang, Ruoshi Ku, Wei |
| author_facet | Gu, Fangyuan Jiang, Ruoshi Ku, Wei |
| contents | The first switchable electric polarization in metals was recently discovered in bilayer and trilayer WTe2. Strangely, despite the tininess of the ordered polarization, the ferroelectricity survives up to 350 K, rendering the mechanism of such ferroelectricity challenging for standard understandings. Here, via a density-functional-based multi-energy-scale analysis of the system's broken symmetries, we identify a weak out-of-plane ferroelectricity accompanying a strong in-plane antiferro-orbital order. This unusual low-energy correlation, which emerges from an antiferroelectric structure formed at much higher energy, naturally explains the above puzzling observation. This result reveals an unprecedented paradigm of electronic ferroelectricity generally applicable to 2D polar metals with ultrafast-switchable polarization ideal for the next-generation non-volatile memory and other devices. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_18438 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | 2D ferroelectricity accompanying antiferro-orbital order in semi-metallic WTe$_2$ Gu, Fangyuan Jiang, Ruoshi Ku, Wei Materials Science Strongly Correlated Electrons The first switchable electric polarization in metals was recently discovered in bilayer and trilayer WTe2. Strangely, despite the tininess of the ordered polarization, the ferroelectricity survives up to 350 K, rendering the mechanism of such ferroelectricity challenging for standard understandings. Here, via a density-functional-based multi-energy-scale analysis of the system's broken symmetries, we identify a weak out-of-plane ferroelectricity accompanying a strong in-plane antiferro-orbital order. This unusual low-energy correlation, which emerges from an antiferroelectric structure formed at much higher energy, naturally explains the above puzzling observation. This result reveals an unprecedented paradigm of electronic ferroelectricity generally applicable to 2D polar metals with ultrafast-switchable polarization ideal for the next-generation non-volatile memory and other devices. |
| title | 2D ferroelectricity accompanying antiferro-orbital order in semi-metallic WTe$_2$ |
| topic | Materials Science Strongly Correlated Electrons |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.18438 |