ZUBKO1

Ferroelectricity and the nanoscale: the role of domains and domain walls

Type

Experimental

#students

 2

Orientation

Ferroelectrics are crystalline materials that have a spontaneous electrical polarisation whose direction can be reversed by applying an external electric field. Their outstanding piezoelectric, pyroelectric and dielectric properties make them extremely useful and have led to a multitude of technological applications ranging from submarine sonars and medical ultrasound to thermal cameras, optoelectronic components and non-volatile ferroelectric random access memories. The ever growing need for device miniaturisation, as well as new device concepts that require robust ferroelectrics with a thickness of just a few nanometres, are currently motivating a lot of interest in ferroelectricity at the nanoscale, where the properties of these materials can be very different and are often dominated by the behaviour of ferroelectric domains and domain walls.

How

These projects will focus on different aspects of ferroelectricity in oxide superlattices consisting of alternating ultra-thin layers of ferroelectric and non-ferroelectric oxides, with a particular emphasis on the static and dynamic properties of nanoscale domains and the functional properties of ferroelectric domain walls.

What

The projects will involve growth of artificially-layered oxide materials using radio-frequency off-axis magnetron sputtering and/or their characterisation using X-ray diffraction, dielectric impedance spectroscopy and other experimental techniques.

Special Knowledge

 

Supervisor

 Dr Pavlo Zubko, p.zubko@ucl.ac.uk