Harnessing Electrostructural Bistability to Control Defects in Polarizable Materials
Abstract
Structural defects are central to the functionalities of materials. However, conventional approaches to defect control are often slow and imprecise. This work identifies and characterizes a distinct physical phenomenon of electrostructural bistability that provides a rapid and precise pathway for engineering materials with defect-controlled physical properties. A generalized theory of conductivity bistability is developed and experimentally validated to unify two distinct regimes: previously reported electrothermal bistability in weakly polarizable insulators, such as silicon, and electrostructural bistability in strongly polarizable materials, such as TiO2. In agreement with the theory, experiments on TiO2 demonstrate that bulk-homogeneous defect concentrations in electrostructurally bistable materials can be tuned rapidly and deterministically by controlling applied electric current. Abruptly interrupting the current quenches the system into long-lived, room-temperature metastable states with distinct properties. This establishes a practical, rapid, and scalable pathway for defect engineering with direct relevance to nonvolatile memory devices.
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BibTeX
@misc{sterling2026harnessing,
title = {{Harnessing Electrostructural Bistability to Control Defects in Polarizable Materials}},
author = {Tyler C. Sterling and Tomke E. Glier and David Abbe and Rahul Nandkishore and Dmitry Reznik},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.33698},
eprint = {2610.33698},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.33698},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Harnessing Electrostructural Bistability to Control Defects in Polarizable Materials
AU - Tyler C. Sterling
AU - Tomke E. Glier
AU - David Abbe
AU - Rahul Nandkishore
AU - Dmitry Reznik
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/24
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.33698
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.33698
AB - Structural defects are central to the functionalities of materials. However, conventional approaches to defect control are often slow and imprecise. This work identifies and characterizes a distinct physical phenomenon of electrostructural bistability that provides a rapid and precise pathway for engineering materials with defect-controlled physical properties. A generalized theory of conductivity bistability is developed and experimentally validated to unify two distinct regimes: previously reported electrothermal bistability in weakly polarizable insulators, such as silicon, and electrostructural bistability in strongly polarizable materials, such as TiO_2. In agreement with the theory, experiments on TiO_2 demonstrate that bulk-homogeneous defect concentrations in electrostructurally bistable materials can be tuned rapidly and deterministically by controlling applied electric current. Abruptly interrupting the current quenches the system into long-lived, room-temperature metastable states with distinct properties. This establishes a practical, rapid, and scalable pathway for defect engineering with direct relevance to nonvolatile memory devices.
ER -