Research on Ferroelectric and Spintronic Nanoscale Materials

Dear Colleagues,

Ferroelectric nanoscale materials have attracted substantial interest due to not only fundamental physical phenomena that are distinct from the bulk, including exotic domain configurations, such as flux-closure domains, polar vortex, and polar skyrmions, but also potential applications in reconfigurable ferroelectric memory devices. Notably, apart from conventional perovskite-based ferroelectrics (e.g., BaTiO₃, (Pb, Zr)TiO₃), fluorite-structured HfO₂-based ferroelectrics are becoming a research hot topic due to their excellent compatibility with complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor technology (CMOS) and robust ferroelectricity at the nanoscale. Meanwhile, spintronic nanoscale materials are fundamentally fascinating because scaling down the dimension of a magnet to nanometers produces diversities of exotic magnetic states, such as a single domain, vortex domain, magnetic skyrmions and so on, which is promising for encoding binary or multiple-state data in novel spin memories. Furthermore, integrating ferromagnetic and ferroelectric materials via interfacial magnetoelectric coupling in nanoscale multiferroic heterostructures provides a promising energy-efficient and high-density storage avenue in future spintronics from the point of view of technological potential.

The present Special Issue of Nanomaterials aims to presenting the current state of the art in the use of ferroelectric and spintronic nanoscale materials, a field that has blossomed since the 2010s, with seminal discoveries such as novel physical phenomena, including polar topological domains, exotic ferroelectric skyrmions, and magnetic skyrmions, and their potential applications, containing ferroelectric memory and low-power and high-density magnetoelectric random memory and logic devices driven by electric field rather than electric current control of magnetization reversal. In the present Special Issue, we have invited contributions from leading groups in the field with the aim of providing a balanced view of the current state of the art in this discipline.

This Special Issue is focused on ferroelectric and spintronic nanoscale materials. Topics of interest of this Special Issue include, but are not limited to:

1. Fabrication and characterization of ferroelectric and spintronic nanoscale materials;
2. Novel topological domains in ferroelectric and spintronic nanoscale materials;
3. Stabilization of metastable HfO₂-based ferroelectric phase;
4. Domain structures and domain dynamics;
5. Prototypical ferroelectric/spintronic memory and logic devices.

Dr. Renci Peng
Dr. Aitian Chen
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• ferroelectric and spintronic nanoscale materials
• novel topological domains
• HfO₂-based ferroelectrics
• stabilization of metastable ferroelectric phase
• domain structures and domain dynamics
• ferroelectric fatigue
• ferroelectric/spintronic memory and logic devices