Events in Physics
Nanoscale phenomena in multiferroic materials
Speaker: Professor Marin Alexe, Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics – Halle, Germany
Functional perovskite materials gain increasing significance due to their wide spectrum of attractive properties, including ferroelectric, ferromagnetic, conducting, superconducting, and multiferroic. Due to the developments of recent years, materials of this type can conveniently be grown in the form of epitaxial films, multilayers, superlattices, and well-ordered arrays of nanoislands opening new avenues in addressing new phenomena which do not exist in single phase materials. It has become evident that the study of interfaces between different individual materials will provide, on one side, a new scientific playground and, on the other side, opportunities for new devices based on complex material integration.
The present talk will address topics which have been recently under focus, including topological vortices in ferroelectrics and multiferroics,[i] anomalous photovoltaic effect,[ii] and tunnel effects in multiferroic junctions[iii] and which reveal considerable fundamental and applied physics existing at functional oxide interfaces.
[i] Direct Observation of Continuous Electric Dipole Rotation in Flux-Closure Domains in Ferroelectric Pb(Zr,Ti)O3. CL Jia, KW Urban, M Alexe, D Hesse, I Vrejoiu: Science 331 1420-23 (2011).