Journal of the American Chemical Society, Vol.129, No.43, 12920-12920, 2007
Structural assignment of polarization in hydrogen-bonded supramolecular ferroelectrics
A 1:1 adduct of phenazine (Phz) with chloranilic acid (H(2)ca) and bromanilic acid (H(2)ba), in which nonpolar neutral molecules are connected by the intermolecular O-(HN)-N-... hydrogen bonds, shows ferroelectric transitions. Neutron diffraction analysis of these materials reveals that there are two inequivalent hydrogen-bonding sites below the ferroelectric transition temperature (253 K for Phz-H(2)ca and 168 K for Phz-H(2)ba). This asymmetry was also observed by the maximum entropy method (MEM) analysis of the synchrotron X-ray diffractions. The structure analysis results suggest that the origin of the polarization of the material is the symmetry breaking based on the two inequivalent hydrogen bonds.