A team including University of Nebraska-Lincoln researchers has shown that hafnium oxide, also called hafnia, has a rare electrical property called antiferroelectricity.
The researchers found that the property became more stable as the material was made thinner. It remained present in films only 0.6 nanometers thick, about one-millionth the width of a millimeter.
The material also stayed stable at temperatures up to 850 degrees Celsius and could switch between two electrical states when a voltage was applied.
The study, published in Science, helps explain how hafnia could be explored for energy storage, computer memory, and other future electronics.
