Interest in two-dimensional (2D) van der Waals materials has grown rapidly across multiple scientific and engineering disciplines in recent years. However, ferroelectricity, the presence of a spontaneous electric polarization, which is important in many practical applications, has rarely been reported in such materials so far. Here we employ first-principles calculations to discover a branch of the 2D materials family, based on In2Se3 and other III2-VI3 van der Waals materials, that exhibits room-temperature ferroelectricity with reversible spontaneous electric polarization in both out-of-plane and in-plane orientations. The device potential of these 2D ferroelectric materials is further demonstrated using the examples of van der Waals heterostructures of In2Se3/graphene, exhibiting a tunable Schottky barrier, and In2Se3/WSe2, showing a significant band gap reduction in the combined system. These findings promise to substantially broaden the tunability of van der Waals heterostructures for a wide range of applications.
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 24. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 28 April 2017.
All research outputs
#1,518,155
of 24,522,750 outputs
Outputs from Nature Communications
#21,455
of 52,820 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#30,081
of 314,329 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Nature Communications
#419
of 884 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 24,522,750 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 93rd percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 52,820 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 56.1. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 59% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 314,329 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 90% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 884 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has gotten more attention than average, scoring higher than 52% of its contemporaries.
