“There was no existing theory in the ferroelectrics community that could explain these results,” Liu explained.

Keeping Chaos at Bay with Small Amounts of Energy

To unlock the advanced material’s performance and open up potential commercial applications, Haixue Yan, a reader in materials science and engineering from Queen Mary University of London, explored several different ideas. That search effort led him to Liu’s relatively new zentropy theory idea. According to a statement announcing the new approach, zentropy theory suggests that systems trend towards disorder “if no energy is applied to keep the chaos at bay.”