Cumulative polarization in conductive interfacial ferroelectrics

Ferroelectricity in atomically thin bilayer structures has been recently predicted(1) and measured(2-4) in two-dimensional materials with hexagonal non-centrosymmetric unit-cells. The crystal symmetry translates lateral shifts between parallel two-dimensional layers to sign changes in their out-of-plane electric polarization, a mechanism termed 'slide-tronics'(4). These observations have been restricted to switching between only two polarization states under low charge carrier densities(5-12), limiting the practical application of the revealed phenomena(13). To overcome these issues, one should explore the nature of polarization in multi-layered van der Waals stacks, how it is governed by intra- and interlayer charge redistribution and to what extent it survives the addition of mobile charge carriers(14). To explore these questions, we conduct surface potential measurements of parallel WSe2 and MoS2 multi-layers with aligned and anti-aligned configurations of the polar interfaces. We find evenly spaced, nearly decoupled potential steps, indicating highly confined interfacial electric fields that provide a means to design multi-state 'ladder-ferroelectrics'. Furthermore, we find that the internal polarization remains notable on electrostatic doping of mobile charge carrier densities as high as 10(1)3 cm(-2), with substantial in-plane conductivity. Using density functional theory calculations, we trace the extra charge redistribution in real and momentum spaces and identify an eventual doping-induced depolarization mechanism.