Berkeley Lab finds ferroelectricity in ultrathin titanium dioxide

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory announced that researchers discovered ferroelectricity in ultrathin titanium dioxide, a finding that could improve energy-efficient microelectronic devices.

• The study found that titanium dioxide becomes ferroelectric only when thinned to below 3 nm, with complementary X-ray and second-harmonic generation measurements showing a transition to a distorted orthorhombic structure.
• The work was led by Sayeef Salahuddin with UC Berkeley, Molecular Foundry, and Advanced Light Source collaborators, and was published in Science; the article frames this as a research announcement rather than a commercial deal.
• The research was supported by the DOE Office of Science and is positioned as relevant to memory and logic chips and lower-power microelectronics in the context of AI and data centers.