Constructing an Overall Static Negative Capacitance Effect via Energy Landscape Designing

Abstract

The negative capacitance (NC) effect in ferroelectrics and antiferroelectrics is promising to reduce power dissipation and enable energy storage applications. However, the limited electric field scale and hysteresis properties of NC effect in ferroelectrics and antiferroelectrics seriously limit its application in transistors and energy‐storage supercapacitors. Here, an overall (non‐local) static (hysteresis‐free) NC effect is developed via energy landscape designing. The ferroelectric structure is introduced into the traditional antiferroelectric PbZrO3 film, thus the single‐well energy landscape is tuned to an upper convex function. This anomalous energy landscape generates a hysteresis‐free and single‐valued polarization‐electric field behavior (P–E) curve with a negative slope (dP/dE < 0), which guarantees the NC effect is static and available over the entire electric field range. Such an NC effect in PbZrO3 film is stabilized by connecting a dielectric Al2O3 layer in series. This finding advances the practical application of the NC effect, especially in transistors and supercapacitors.