Ferroelectricity in glycine: A mini-review

Glycine is the simplest natural amino acid, a basic building block for various biomaterials. Supramolecular packing of glycine molecules into three main crystalline polymorphs allows controlling their functional properties, such as piezoelectricity and ferroelectricity. Though in well studied reviewed, its ferroelectric properties were not summarized analyzed until now. In this mini-review, we briefly discuss polymorphs, phase transitions, review recent findings on domain structure polarization switching ?- ?-glycine, consider possible applications biocompatible photonic piezoelectric devices.