Interfacial ferroelectricity at naturally-formed van der Waals interfaces.

Interlayer directional sliding in van der Waals layered SnSe2 semiconductors with non-centrosymmetric naturally formed interfaces produces robust, non-volatile out-of-plane ferroelectricity.

• Why it matters: Scalable, reproducible wafer-level sliding ferroelectric storage is constrained by complex artificial stacking, and naturally occurring van der Waals systems with confirmed sliding ferroelectricity are still limited.
• What they did: The team used comprehensive piezoresponse force microscopy to verify non-volatile out-of-plane switching in SnSe2 flakes, and in-situ biasing scanning transmission electron microscopy to visualize field-driven interfacial sliding coupled to reversible polarization switching.
• The result: The experiments and theoretical calculations consistently support sliding paths in non-centrosymmetric SnSe2, suggesting broadly applicable out-of-plane ferroelectricity in van der Waals layered materials with such interfaces.

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