Submitted Abstract
The recent discovery that under certain conditions ferroelectric materials can behave as if they have a negative dielectric permittivity (or negative capacitance) has been touted as a potential breakthrough in power management for microelectronics and is creating a lot ofexcitement in both the academic community and industry. Yet some of the most fundamental questions related to the origin and the possibilities and limitations of this phenomenon remain unanswered. It is the aim of this project to systematically explore the fundamentals of ferroelectric negative capacitance by combining a variety of state-of-the-art experimental methods with advanced first- and second-principles simulations.