
Atomic Mosaic: How to Switch Tiles a Quarter of a Unit Cell Wide
A mosaic of atoms where each tile switches on its own long remained a beautiful but impractical idea. In an ordinary ferroelectric, a material that stores a bit through the direction of its electric polarization, neighboring tiles are coupled. To flip one, you have to drag others along, and the pattern comes out coarse: domains several nanometers wide, not one atom.