The 1980s saw the development of ferroelectric chiral smectic C (SmC*) liquid crystals (FLCs) with a clear focus on their application in fast electro-optic devices. However, as only known fluid materials, they also have potential other applications, one which is heat-exchange devices based electrocaloric effect. In particular, can be both material and heat exchanging an device, significantly si...

The effect of cation ordering on an electric field-induced relaxor to normal ferroelectric phase transition in Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3 (PMN)-based ceramics was investigated. Both A-site La doping and B-site Sc doping were found to enhance the chemical ordering in these relaxor ceramics. However, the enhanced chemical orderings showed different impacts on the dielectric and ferroelectric properties in ...

In multivariant systems, several energetically degenerate low temperature domain states can be produced at the structural phase transition. Coexistence of these domain states can produce mesoscopic structures that possess symmetries distinct from the microscopic single domain crystal symmetry. Such engineered domain structures in certain ferroelectric materials have been proven to give superior...

at the transition temperature due to space charges in ferroelectric thin films I. B. Misirlioglu, M. B. Okatan, and S. P. Alpay Faculty of Engineering and Natural Sciences, Sabancı University, Tuzla-Orhanli, 34956 Istanbul, Turkey Department of Chemical, Materials, and Biomolecular Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering Program, and Institute of Materials Science, University of Connecti...

As the dimension of the microelectronic devices keep shrinking there is a pressing need to increase the dielectric constant of the gate oxide. Fabrication of the gate oxide out of ferroelectric nanostructure provides a possible solution. However, new approaches to the fabrication of ferroelectric nanostructures onto substrates are needed before nanoscale ferroelectrics can be successfully integ...

Ferroelectric crystals are important materials in many kinds of applications. Since the invention of so called quasi-phase matching technique, periodically domain-inverted ferroelectrics crystals with modulated second order nonlinear susceptibility are widely used in frequency conversion application. In periodically domain-inverted ferroelectrics crystals, besides the nonlinear optical coeffici...

The ceramic Pb0.99Nb0.02[(Zr0.57Sn0.43)0.92Ti0.08]0.98O3 can exist in either an antiferroelectric or a ferroelectric phase at room temperature, depending on the thermal and electrical history. The antiferroelectric phase can be partially recovered from the induced ferroelectric phase when the applied field reverses polarity. Therefore, polarization cycling of the ferroelectric phase in the cera...

Nonlinear effects in the coupling of polarization with elastic strain have been predicted to occur in ferroelectric materials subjected to high electric fields. Such predictions are tested here for a PbZr0.2Ti0.8O3 ferroelectric thin film at electric fields in the range of several hundred MV/m and strains reaching up to 2.7%. The piezoelectric strain exceeds predictions based on constant piezoe...

The racemic oxovanadium(IV) salmmen complexes, [VO((rac)-(4-X-salmmen))] (X = C12C10C5 (1), C16 (2), and C18 (3); salmmen = N,N'-monomethylenebis-salicylideneimine) with "banana shaped" molecular structures were synthesized, and their ferroelectric properties were investigated. These complexes exhibit well-defined hysteresis loops in their viscous phases, moreover, 1 also displays liquid crysta...