A ferroelectric helical polymer†

Abstract

This communication introduces helical polyacetylene (P1) with an appended acceptor (A)–donor (D)–acceptor (A) conjugated chromophore as a promising ferroelectric candidate. The helical conformation of P1 leads to a highly stable chiral assembly of the appended ADA chromophores. This results in prominent ferroelectricity as evident from the superior hysteresis loop at room temperature, exhibiting a saturation polarization (P_S) value ∼2 μC cm⁻² and remanent polarization (P_r) value ∼1.8 μC cm⁻² at a low coercive field (E_c) of 5.2 kV cm⁻¹, rarely reported before for purely organic systems.