Low voltage-driven high-performance thermal switching in antiferroelectric PbZrO₃ thin films

Effective control of heat transfer is vital for energy saving and carbon emission reduction. In contrast to achievements in electrical conduction, active control of heat transfer is much more challenging. Ferroelectrics are promising candidates for thermal switching as a result of their tunable domain structures. However, switching ratios in ferroelectrics are low (<1.2). We report that high-quality antiferroelectric PbZrO₃ epitaxial thin films exhibit high-contrast (>2.2), fast-speed (<150 nanoseconds), and long-lifetime (>10⁷) thermal switching under a small voltage (<10 V). In situ reciprocal space mapping and atomistic modelings reveal that the field-driven antiferroelectric-ferroelectric phase transition induces a substantial change of primitive cell size, which modulates phonon-phonon scattering phase space drastically and results in high switching ratio. These results advance the concept of thermal transport control in ferroic materials.