Ferroelectrics are of practical interest for non‐volatile data storage due to their reorientable, crystallographically defined polarization. Yet efforts to integrate conventional ferroelectrics into ultrathin memories have been frustrated by film‐thickness limitations, which impede polarization reversal under low applied voltage. Wurtzite materials, including magnesium‐substituted zinc oxide (Zn,Mg)O, have been shown to exhibit scalable ferroelectricity as thin films. In this work, the origins of ferroelectricity in (Zn,Mg)O are explained, showing that large strain fluctuations emerge locally in (Zn,Mg)O and can reduce local barriers to ferroelectric switching by more than 40%. Concurrent experimental and computational evidence of these effects are provided by demonstrating polarization switching in ZnO/(Zn,Mg)O/ZnO heterostructures featuring built‐in interfacial strain gradients. These results open up an avenue to develop scalable ferroelectrics by controlling strain fluctuations atomistically.

中文翻译：

---

应变波动解锁纤锌矿中的铁电性


铁电体因其可重新定向的晶体学定义极化而对非易失性数据存储具有实际意义。然而，将传统铁电体集成到超薄存储器中的努力因薄膜厚度限制而受挫，这阻碍了低施加电压下的极化反转。纤锌矿材料，包括镁取代的氧化锌 （Zn，Mg）O，已被证明具有薄膜形式的可扩展铁电性。在这项工作中，解释了 （Zn，Mg）O 中铁电性的起源，表明 （Zn，Mg）O 中局部出现较大的应变波动，并且可以将铁电开关的局部障碍降低 40% 以上。通过证明具有内置界面应变梯度的 ZnO/（Zn，Mg）O/ZnO 异质结构中的极化切换，提供了这些效应的同步实验和计算证据。这些结果为通过原子控制应变波动来开发可扩展的铁电体开辟了一条途径。