A Simple Model for Hydrogen-Bonding Ferroelectrics

There are some substances in which their hydrogen bonds are considered to play quite important roles in their ferroelectric or antiferroelectric phase transition. These ferroelectrics usually have large isotope effects in phase transition temperatures and we expect the physics of hydrogen bonds is closely related to the effects. We propose a simple model describing the isolated hydrogen bond. Based on quantum-mechanical analyses of this model, we study the difference between the behavior of a proton and a deuteron in hydrogen bonds.