Towards photoferroic materials by design: recent progress and perspectives

The use of photoferroic materials that combine ferroelectric and light-harvesting properties in a photovoltaic device is a promising route to significantly improving the efficiency of solar cells. These materials do not require the formation of a p-n junction and can produce photovoltages well above the value of the band gap, because of spontaneous intrinsic polarization and the formation of domain walls. From this perspective, we discuss the recent experimental progress and challenges regarding the synthesis of these materials and the theoretical discovery of novel photoferroic materials using a high-throughput approach.