Room-temperature growth of ferroelectric diisopropylammonium bromide with 12-crown-4 addition

Abstract

Diisopropylammonium bromide (DIPAB) is reported to be ferroelectric with a spontaneous polarization of 23 μC cm⁻² above room temperature, which is close to that of BaTiO₃. However, it is difficult to grow single crystals of DIPAB with a ferroelectric phase at room temperature. Here, a solution method using 12-crown-4 as an additive in solvent is found to easily obtain ferroelectric DIPAB single crystals. It indicates that the addition of 12-crown-4 facilitates the crystallization of a ferroelectric DIPAB crystal. Ferroelectric DIPAB's pyroelectric coefficient measured by dynamic pyroelectric current is about 65–325 μC m⁻² K⁻¹ at room temperature, which reveals that DIPAB is a good candidate for infrared detectors. Therefore, this modified method is very useful to grow ferroelectric DIPAB and its derivative.