Ferroelectrics are an interesting class of materials having very broad interest from both fundamental and applicative point of view. Development of information technology in the great extent relies on the ability of certain materials to relatively easily change the polarization direction using an applied voltage.  Ferroelectrics have found valuable applications is non-volatile memory devices, sensors and actuators, microelectromechanical systems, micromotors, acoustic and energy harvesting devices.

Despite a variety of ferroelectrics have been discovered so far, lead-based oxides are still dominant in this field, which is nowadays becoming an increasing environmental problem, due to lead toxicity, scarce elemental resources and high cost. To overcome this problem and to offer some new features that will lead to development of advanced technological devices, recently a new class of materials has appeared on the ferroelectric scene.

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These are the compounds containing organic groups which act as ligand or cation, and in combination with inorganic constituting units they assemble into either coordination compounds or other hybrid inorganic-organic systems. Advantages these materials offer are relatively simple synthetic protocols at low temperature and possibility to tune their structural properties. However, rational design of new systems in molecular ferroelectric materials is still one of the biggest challenges. There are other problems to overcome, such as too low Curie temperature they often exhibit.

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The quest for novel multifunctional and environmentally friendly materials imposes new challenges in the synthesis and performance of ferroelectrics. Considering that research related to molecule-based ferroelectrics started only two decades ago, there are many types of compounds that still need to be explored.