Tailoring the coercive field in ferroelectric metal-free perovskites by hydrogen bonding

The miniaturization of ferroelectric devices in non-volatile memories requires the device to maintain stable switching behavior as the thickness scales down to nanometer scale, which requires the coercive field to be sufficiently large. Recently discovered metal-free perovskites exhibit advantages such as structural tunability and solution-processability, but they are disadvantaged by a lower coercive field compared to inorganic perovskites. Herein, we demonstrate that the coercive field (110 kV/cm) in metal-free ferroelectric perovskite MDABCO-NH(4)-(PF(6))(3) (MDABCO = N-methyl-N’-diazabicyclo[2.2.2]octonium) is one order larger than MDABCO-NH(4)-I(3) (12 kV/cm) owing to the stronger intermolecular hydrogen bonding in the former. Using isotope experiments, the ferroelectric-to-paraelectric phase transition temperature and coercive field are verified to be strongly influenced by hydrogen bonds. Our work highlights that the coercive field of organic ferroelectrics can be tailored by tuning the strength of hydrogen bonding.