Structure and dynamics of interfaces in ferroic materials

Ferroic materials display a variety of (electrical, mechanical, magnetic, etc.) properties, which make them enormously appealing for technological applications, e.g. in electronic and electromechanical devices. Recently it was found, that the properties of ferroic materials can be tuned by exploiting the unique functionalities of interfaces, e.g. of domain walls or phase fronts.
Such interfaces are usually very small objects, i.e. of the order of view nanometres thick (1 nanometre = 0.000001 mm). Nevertheless, they can drastically change the macroscopic (mm scale) behaviour of a material, since in real crystals there can exist millions of such interfaces.
Within the present project we will perform a close collaboration between experimental work and theory to reach understanding of the structure, the static properties and the dynamic behaviour of functional interfaces.
This became only possible due to the enormous progress made in high resolution local probe techniques. We will apply these methods in close cooperation with renowned groups in Belgium and Germany to perform high resolution transmission electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy and piezoforce microscopy in complex oxided and complement them by macroscopic techniques and theoretical calculations.
The innovative aspect of our project is the “multi-scale approach”, i.e. the aim to link local (0.00000001 mm) and average structures across different length scales (over some nanometres and finally to mm) and to clarify their influence on the macroscopic behaviour of the materials.
Many of the expected results will be of importance for novel functional materials with superior properties.