Abstract
Molecular ferroelastic with the natural features of mechanical
flexibility and switchable spontaneous strain have attracted widespread
attention in the scientific community due to their potential
applications in tunable gratings, flexible memorizers, strain sensors,
and intelligent actuators. However, most designs of molecular
ferroelastics remain in the stage of blind exploration, posing a
challenge to achieve a functional ferroelastic more effectively. Herein,
we have successfully obtained a molecular ferroelastic,
[Me2NH(CH2)2NH3](ReO4)2
(Me2NH(CH2)2NH3
= N,N-dimethylethylenediammonium), under the guidance of the
mono-/double-protonating strategy. The double-protonated
[Me2NH(CH2)2NH3](ReO4)2
undergoes a paraelastic-ferroelastic phase transition with the Aizu
notation of 2/mF-1 at 322 K. Meanwhile, the theoretical
calculation and experimental measurement simultaneously show that
[Me2NH(CH2)2NH3](ReO4)2
possesses good mechanical flexibility, because its elastic modulus
(E) of 8.26 GPa and hardness (H) of 0.45 GPa is smaller
than the average value of organic crystals (E of 12.05 GPa and
H of 0.5 GPa), which makes it promising to apply in wearable
pressure sensors, implantable medical sensors, high-precision tuners,
etc. This work further enriches the molecular ferroelastic family and
demonstrates that mono-/double-protonation is one of the effective
molecular modification strategies for designing ferroelastics.