Abstract This review summarizes dielectric studies and related experiments on ferroelectrics and multiferroics about which there has been considerable controversy in the literature, sometimes at unusually impolite and unprofessional levels. In addition it focuses attention on a new anomalous phenomenon – that of ferroelectric hysteresis loops P(E) that are parallelograms with straight sides. In some cases materials have been considered to be multiferroic when the data can be interpreted more simply via other well-known mechanisms. In some cases the systems truly are multiferroic, despite X-ray crystallographic data implying that this is not possible; some properties arise only from the domain walls. And in some cases authors get different results from previous work, simply because they used bulk ceramics instead of very thin films, or epitaxial films instead of randomly oriented ceramics; it is of course preferable if groups exchange specimens before they claim the work of others is simply wrong. Emphasis is on newly discovered lozenge-shaped hysteresis loops, whose parallelepiped geometries are found in four unrelated materials. This review has intentionally not discussed ferroelectric artifacts that appear in atomic force microscopy, since that is actually more extensive in variety and well reviewed this year by Kalinin’s group [1] .

中文翻译：

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铁电、多铁和人工制品：菱形磁滞和夜间颠簸的东西

摘要 本综述总结了有关铁电体和多铁性体的介电研究和相关实验，在文献中对此存在相当大的争议，有时在异常不礼貌和不专业的水平上。此外，它还关注一种新的异常现象——铁电磁滞回线 P(E) 是具有直边的平行四边形。在某些情况下，当数据可以通过其他众所周知的机制更简单地解释时，材料被认为是多铁性的。在某些情况下，系统确实是多铁性的，尽管 X 射线晶体学数据暗示这是不可能的；某些特性仅来自畴壁。在某些情况下，作者得到了与以前工作不同的结果，仅仅是因为他们使用大块陶瓷而不是非常薄的薄膜，或外延膜代替随机取向的陶瓷；如果团体在声称其他人的工作完全错误之前交换样本，那当然更好。重点是新发现的菱形磁滞回线，在四种不相关的材料中发现了其平行六面体几何形状。这篇评论有意不讨论出现在原子力显微镜中的铁电伪影，因为它的种类实际上更广泛，并且今年由 Kalinin 的小组 [1] 进行了很好的评论。