Conditions for Domain-Free Negative Capacitance

While negative capacitance (NC) has been demonstrated in ferroelectric-dielectric (FE-DE) heterostructures in the form of capacitance enhancement, all experimental evidence, to date, suggests the existence of domains therein. Here, we address the question: what are the conditions to achieve ideal, domain-free NC in FE-DE heterostructures? Our main claim is that for given thicknesses of the ferroelectric and the dielectric layers, there is a critical value of domain wall energy parameter—above which the system would be stabilized in an ideal and robust domain-free NC state and would be robust against domain formation. Our analyses suggest that to achieve ideal NC, efforts should lie in understanding the means to control the domain wall energy on all fronts, both theory and experiments via high throughput design, discovery, and engineering of ferroelectrics.