REPLYING TO G. D’Avino et al. Nature 547, 10.1038/nature22801 (2017)

Charge-transfer molecular complexes are an important class of well studied ferroelectric organic systems. First postulated1 in 1981, tetrathiafulvalene-p-chloranil is among the first charge-transfer compounds to demonstrate ferroelectric hysteresis curves, three decades after the discovery of such compounds2. The lock-arm supramolecular ordering (LASO) complexes we designed3 are similar materials, incorporating hydrogen bonds in a three-dimensional network that exhibits ferroelectricity at room temperature. In the accompanying Comment4, D’Avino et al. attempt to reproduce our ferroelectric measurements. However, we draw attention to two serious concerns with their crystal quality and device measurement protocols, which we addressed in our work3. D’Avino et al.4 present room-temperature measurements for only one crystal; the crystal exhibits considerable leakage current and the low-temperature measurements reveal linear capacitive behaviour as opposed to ferroelectricity.

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