  This paper investigates the thermodynamic driving force of transient negative
capacitance (NC) in the series circuit of the resistor and ferroelectric
capacitor (R-FEC). We find that the widely used Landau-Khalatnikov (L-K)
theory, that is, the minimum of the Gibbs free energy, is inapplicable to
explain the transient NC. The thermodynamic driving force of the transient NC
phenomenon is the minimum of the difference between the elastic Gibbs free
energy and the electric polarization work. The appearance of the transient NC
phenomenon is not due to the widely accepted view that the ferroelectric
polarization goes through the negative curvature region of elastic Gibbs free
energy landscape (Ga). Instead, the transient NC phenomenon appears when the
energy barrier of Ga disappears. The transient NC is dependent on both the
intrinsic ferroelectric material parameters and extrinsic factors in the R-FEC
circuit.

Applied Physics