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Manipulating thousands of non-volatile polarization states within one sliding ferroelectric transistor at room temperature

Nature Electronics (2026)Cite this article

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Abstract

Creating multiple polarization states in a single ferroelectric device is of use in neuromorphic computing to enhance computational resolution. However, the number of stable polarization states in such systems is typically limited to 32 at room temperature. Here we report the manipulation of thousands of non-volatile polarization states at room temperature in a sliding ferroelectric transistor that is composed of an aligned graphene monolayer atop hexagonal boron nitride. Solely regulated by source–drain pulses, more than 36 quasi-continuous polarization states can be generated at one doping level. Superimposing a gate voltage during the source–drain pulses can reversibly regulate the graphene Fermi energy between 84 doping levels, promoting the number of physically distinct polarization states to 3,024 (36 states × 84 doping levels). These polarization states can sustain for over 105 s and could potentially persist for 10 years. The abundant polarization states probably stem from the motion of polar domain walls and the moiré potential localizing the injected carriers. The simulation of during-training quantization in a deep residual network using the 3,024 polarization states shows a floating-point-comparable recognition accuracy (around 93.53%) for fashion images.

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Fig. 1: Numerous non-volatile polarization states in one Gr/hBN device.
Fig. 2: Source–drain-pulse-modulated sliding ferroelectricity in device D2.
Fig. 3: Multistate polarization based on sliding ferroelectricity at 300 K.
Fig. 4: Multistate polarization at different doping levels in device D4 at 1.5 K.
Fig. 5: Over 3,000 physically distinct polarization states in a Gr/hBN device (D4) at room temperature.

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Source data are provided with this paper. All other relevant data are available from the corresponding authors upon reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This research was partially supported by the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2019YFA0705400); the National Natural Science Foundation of China (T2293691, 12372111 and 12104228); the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20250080 and BK20243065); the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities and the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (NE2023006, NC2023001, NJ2023002, NJ2022002, NJ2024001, ILF23010 and THB24004); the Fund of Prospective Layout of Scientific Research for NUAA (Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics (NUAA)); the State Key Laboratory of Mechanics and Control for Aerospace Structures (NUAA; grant number MCAS-S-0123G02); the Center for Microscopy and Analysis (NUAA); and the High-Performance Computational Center (NUAA) for technical assistance.

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  1. These authors contributed equally: Xiaofan Wang, Xiaokai Chen.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory for Intelligent Nano Materials and Devices of Ministry of Education, State Key Laboratory of Mechanics and Control of Mechanical Structures, and Institute for Frontier Science, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing, China

    Xiaofan Wang, Xiaokai Chen, Yuyang Long, Jinguo Liu, Fanrong Lin, Jun Yin, Yanpeng Liu & Wanlin Guo

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Contributions

W.G., X.W. and Y. Liu conceived of the project. X.W. and J.L. fabricated the devices and performed the measurements. X.C. completed the DFT calculation and simulated the neural network. Y. Long completed the Kelvin probe force microscopy and piezoresponse force microscopy tests. X.W., F.L. and J.Y. analysed and interpreted the data. W.G., X.W. and Y. Liu wrote the paper. W.G. supervised this work.

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Correspondence to Xiaofan Wang, Yanpeng Liu or Wanlin Guo.

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Nature Electronics thanks Wenwu Li and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Wang, X., Chen, X., Long, Y. et al. Manipulating thousands of non-volatile polarization states within one sliding ferroelectric transistor at room temperature. Nat Electron (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41928-025-01551-7

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