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Tayi et al. reply

Nature volume 547, pages E14–E15 (2017)Cite this article

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REPLYING TO G. D’Avino et al. Nature 547, 10.1038/nature22801 (2017)

Charge-transfer molecular complexes are an important class of well studied ferroelectric organic systems. First postulated1 in 1981, tetrathiafulvalene-p-chloranil is among the first charge-transfer compounds to demonstrate ferroelectric hysteresis curves, three decades after the discovery of such compounds2. The lock-arm supramolecular ordering (LASO) complexes we designed3 are similar materials, incorporating hydrogen bonds in a three-dimensional network that exhibits ferroelectricity at room temperature. In the accompanying Comment4, D’Avino et al. attempt to reproduce our ferroelectric measurements. However, we draw attention to two serious concerns with their crystal quality and device measurement protocols, which we addressed in our work3. D’Avino et al.4 present room-temperature measurements for only one crystal; the crystal exhibits considerable leakage current and the low-temperature measurements reveal linear capacitive behaviour as opposed to ferroelectricity.

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Figure 1: Images of the devices made with co-crystal 1·3 and splintered co-crystal 1·3 and their room-temperature (300 K) hysteresis curves.

References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, 60208, Illinois, USA

    Alok S. Tayi & Samuel I. Stupp

  2. Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University, Evanston, 60208, Illinois, USA

    Alexander K. Shveyd, Andrew C.-H. Sue, Jodi M. Szarko, Brian S. Rolczynski, Dennis Cao, Amy A. Sarjeant, Charlotte L. Stern, Walter F. Paxton, Sanjeev K. Dey, Albert C. Fahrenbach, Lin X. Chen, J. Fraser Stoddart & Samuel I. Stupp

  3. Department of Electrical Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, 90095, California, USA

    Andrew C.-H. Sue & Kang L. Wang

  4. ANSER Center, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, 60208, USA

    Jodi M. Szarko, Brian S. Rolczynski & Lin X. Chen

  5. Chemical Sciences and Engineering Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, 60439, Illinois, USA

    Jodi M. Szarko, Brian S. Rolczynski & Lin X. Chen

  6. Graduate School of EEWS, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Daejeon, 305-701, South Korea

    Dennis Cao, Albert C. Fahrenbach & J. Fraser Stoddart

  7. Department of Physics, Northwestern University, Evanston, 60208, Illinois, USA

    T. Jackson Kennedy

  8. Department of Electrical Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, 60208, Illinois, USA

    Wei Wu & Hooman Mohseni

  9. Center for Nanoscale Materials, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois, 60439, USA

    Jeffrey R. Guest

  10. Department of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, 60611, Illinois, USA

    Samuel I. Stupp

  11. Institute for BioNanotechnology in Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, 60611, Illinois, USA

    Samuel I. Stupp

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  1. Alok S. Tayi
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Correspondence to Samuel I. Stupp.

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Tayi, A., Shveyd, A., Sue, AH. et al. Tayi et al. reply. Nature 547, E14–E15 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nature22802

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