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Reply to: Inconclusive proof of ferroelectricity in peptide-VDF ribbons

Nature volume 644, pages E4–E6 (2025)Cite this article

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The Original Article was published on 06 August 2025

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replying to: M. Litterst et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09314-2 (2025).

In their Comment, Kemerink and colleagues1 raised concerns about the proof of ferroelectricity in the peptide-programmed supramolecular assemblies reported in our paper2. The main issue pointed out by Kemerink and colleagues is that the polarization versus electric field curves (P–E loops) measured by the in-plane set-up in our paper show unsaturated remnant polarization strengths with increasing amplitude of driving voltage, which is not expected in typical ferroelectrics. For this Reply, we have completed further experiments that we believe explain the apparent non-saturating behaviour of remnant polarization attributed by Kemerink and colleagues to inconclusive proof of ferroelectricity in our samples1.

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Fig. 1: Finite element simulation of the electric field distribution within the film cast on 2-μm-gap in-plane electrodes under different applied voltages.
Fig. 2 : P–E loops of VDF6–VEVE films with different thicknesses.

Data availability

The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author.

References     

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Regenerative Nanomedicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA

    Yang Yang, Hiroaki Sai, Liam C. Palmer & Samuel I. Stupp

  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Hiroaki Sai, Simon A. Egner & Samuel I. Stupp

  3. Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Ruomeng Qiu, Liam C. Palmer & Samuel I. Stupp

  4. Department of Biomedical Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA

    Samuel I. Stupp

  5. Department of Medicine, Northwestern University, Chicago, IL, USA

    Samuel I. Stupp

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  1. Yang Yang
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  2. Hiroaki Sai
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  3. Simon A. Egner
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  4. Ruomeng Qiu
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Contributions

Y.Y., L.C.P. and S.I.S. wrote the paper. All authors contributed to the final version of the paper.

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Correspondence to Samuel I. Stupp.

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Yang, Y., Sai, H., Egner, S.A. et al. Reply to: Inconclusive proof of ferroelectricity in peptide-VDF ribbons. Nature 644, E4–E6 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09315-1

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