Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have discovered that an ultra-thin form of titanium dioxide can behave as a ferroelectric material. The finding could help future computer chips use much less energy while delivering better performance. It may also reduce heat in smaller electronic devices.
The research was led by Professor Sayeef Salahuddin, a faculty scientist at Berkeley Lab and professor at the University of California, Berkeley. The study was published in the journal Science. According to Berkeley Lab, the team worked with researchers at the Molecular Foundry and the Advanced Light Source to study the material at the nanoscale.
The discovery addresses a major challenge in chip design. As electronic devices become smaller, they need materials that can switch electrical states using less power. Many known ferroelectric materials lose this property when they become very thin. The new study found that titanium dioxide does the opposite, becoming ferroelectric when it is made extremely thin.
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The researchers created titanium dioxide films ranging from one to ten nanometers thick using atomic layer deposition, a method that builds materials one atomic layer at a time. They found that samples thinner than 3 nanometers changed their crystal structure and developed ferroelectric behavior. X-ray and optical measurements confirmed this change.
The discovery could support future memory chips and logic chips that use less electricity. Ferroelectric materials can switch electrical states at lower voltages than many current materials. This may improve energy efficiency in smartphones, computers, AI hardware, and large data centers.
The research is still at an early stage. Scientists must test how the material performs in real semiconductor devices and determine whether it can be produced at large scale using existing chip manufacturing processes. More work is also needed to find other materials with similar properties.
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The study shows that common materials can behave very differently at the nanoscale. According to Berkeley Lab, this opens new opportunities for designing smaller and more energy-efficient electronics. The team also hopes to build a library of ultra-thin ferroelectric materials for future chip technologies.
According to Berkeley Lab, the discovery could help lower power use in next-generation electronics as demand grows for AI computing and high-performance data centers. The research also expands scientists’ understanding of how materials behave at atomic scales.
