Discovery of Ferroelectricity in the Fullerene Adduct C<sub>60</sub>S<sub>8</sub>
Yong Ai, Wei‐Qiang Liao, Yan‐Ran Weng, Hui‐Peng Lv, Xiao‐Gang Chen, Xian‐Jiang Song, Pengfei Li, Ren‐Gen Xiong
Abstract
Fullerenes offer versatile functionalities and are promising materials for a widespread range of applications from biomedicine and energy to electronics. Great efforts have been made to manipulate the symmetries of fullerene and its derivatives for studying material properties and novel effects, such as ferroelectricity with polar symmetry; however, no documentary report has been obtained to realize their ferroelectricity. Here, for the first time, we demonstrated clear ferroelectricity in a fullerene adduct formed by C 60 and S 8 . More is different: the combination of the most symmetric molecule C 60 with the highest I h symmetry and molecule S 8 with high D 4 d symmetry resulted in the polar C 60 S 8 adduct with a low crystallographic symmetry of the C 2 v ( mm 2) point group at room temperature. The presented C 60 S 8 undergoes polar-to-polar ferroelectric phase transition with the mm 2F m notation, whose ferroelectricity was confirmed by a ferroelectric hysteresis loop and ferroelectric domain switching. This finding opens up a new functionality for fullerenes and sheds light on the exploration of more ferroelectric fullerenes.