Record high-T(c) and large practical utilization level of electric polarization in metal-free molecular antiferroelectric solid solutions

Metal-free antiferroelectric materials are holding a promise for energy storage application, owing to their unique merits of wearability, environmental friendliness, and structure tunability. Despite receiving great interests, metal-free antiferroelectrics are quite limited and it is a challenge to acquire new soft antiferroelectric candidates. Here, we have successfully exploited binary CMBr(x)I(1-x) and CMBr(x)Cl(1-x) solid solution as single crystals (0 ≤ x ≤ 1, where CM is cyclohexylmethylammonium). A molecule-level modification can effectively enhance Curie temperature. Emphatically, the binary CM-chloride salt shows the highest antiferroelectric-to-paraelectric Curie temperature of ~453 K among the known molecular antiferroelectrics. Its characteristic double electrical hysteresis loops provide a large electric polarization up to ~11.4 μC/cm(2), which endows notable energy storage behaviors. To our best knowledge, this work provides an effective solid-solution methodology to the targeted design of new metal-free antiferroelectric candidates toward biocompatible energy storage devices.