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Reply to: On the ferroelectricity of CH3NH3PbI3 perovskites

Nature Materials volume 18, pages 1051–1053 (2019)Cite this article

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A Publisher Correction to this article was published on 30 September 2019

The Original Article was published on 16 September 2019

This article has been updated

replying to: A. D. Schulz et al. Nature Materials https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-019-0480-7 (2019)

First, we thank Schulz et al.1 for their response to our Article2. Schulz et al. raise a few concerns regarding the piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM) measurements and their interpretation, as well as the crystal orientation, which they claim brings into question our central conclusions. Accordingly, Schulz et al. conclude that ferroelectricity is responsible for the origin of the PFM signal. However, we do not agree with this conclusion as there is no measurable electromechanical contrast above 1 pm V−1 and there are strong mechanical and chemical variations inside the twin domains that, in our opinion, are behind the measured PFM signal.

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Fig. 1: Studies of CH3NH3PbI3 thin films with different crystallographic orientation.
Fig. 2: DART-PFM and LDV-PFM measurements of the original sample in our Article.

Change history

  • 30 September 2019

    An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

References

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Acknowledgements

This research was conducted at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, which is a DOE Office of Science User Facility.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA

    Yongtao Liu, Liam Collins, Songkil Kim, Anton V. Ievlev, Stephen Jesse, Scott T. Retterer, Alex Belianinov, Kai Xiao, Jingsong Huang, Bobby G. Sumpter, Sergei V. Kalinin & Olga S. Ovchinnikova

  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA

    Yongtao Liu, Mahshid Ahmadi & Bin Hu

  3. Asylum Research an Oxford Instruments Company, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

    Roger Proksch

  4. School of Mechanical Engineering, Pusan National University, Busan, South Korea

    Songkil Kim

  5. Department of Chemistry, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA

    Brianna R. Watson & Tessa R. Calhoun

  6. Chemical Sciences Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA

    Benjamin Doughty

  7. Computational Sciences and Engineering Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA

    Jingsong Huang & Bobby G. Sumpter

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Contributions

Y.L. prepared the samples. Y.L. and R.P. performed experiments. Y.L., A.V.I., R.P., L.C., S.J., S.V.K. and O.S.O. wrote the manuscript. All authors contributed to discussions.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Olga S. Ovchinnikova.

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The authors declare no competing interests.

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Liu, Y., Collins, L., Proksch, R. et al. Reply to: On the ferroelectricity of CH3NH3PbI3 perovskites. Nat. Mater. 18, 1051–1053 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-019-0481-6

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