Development of ferroelectric nematic fluids with giant-ε dielectricity and nonlinear optical properties

Authors：Li, Jinxing; Nishikawa, Hiroya; Kougo, Junichi; Zhou, Junchen; Dai, Shuqi; Tang, Wentao; Zhao, Xiuhu; Hisai, Yuki; Huang, Mingjun^*; Aya, Satoshi^*

Source：Science Advances, 2021, 7(17): eabf5047.

DOI：10.1126/sciadv.abf5047

• CARBON NANOTUBES
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• CRYSTAL
• PERMITTIVITY
• TEMPERATURE
• DENSITY
• BATIO3
• FILMS
• PERFORMANCE

Superhigh-epsilon materials that exhibit exceptionally high dielectric permittivity are recognized as potential candidates for a wide range of next-generation photonic and electronic devices. In general, achieving a high-epsilon state requires low material symmetry, as most known high-epsilon materials are symmetry-broken crystals. There are few reports on fluidic high-epsilon dielectrics. Here, we demonstrate how small molecules with high polarity, enabled by rational molecular design and machine learning analyses, enable the development of superhigh-epsilon fluid materials (dielectric permittivity, epsilon > 10(4)) with strong second harmonic generation and macroscopic spontaneous polar ordering. The polar structures are confirmed to be identical for all the synthesized materials. Furthermore, adapting this strategy to high-molecular weight systems allows us to generalize this approach to polar polymeric materials, creating polar soft matters with spontaneous symmetry breaking.