Mr Yachin Ivry

Nationality: Israel

Year: 2007

Subject Area: Science and Engineering

Ferroelectrics are functional materials that are commonly used in every-day technologies such as RF-filters, non-volatile memory and medical imaging systems. They have been extensively researched at both the macro- (>1m) and micro- (<1nm) scales, but in the absence of a satisfactory characterisation technique for the intermediate (sub-micron) scale, many long-standing fundamental questions remain unanswered.

During the last year, the Wingate Foundation has allowed me to be engaged with my PhD research which aims at investigating ferroelectricity at the intermediate scale. So far, we have improved much the resolution of the mainstream candidate technique for imaging ferroelectricity at this scale (Piezo-response Force Microscopy), what allows us to directly observe and manipulate ferroelectricity at the sub-micron regime. Among the rest, we have revealed multi-scale mechanisms of ferroelectricity and observed the smallest stable native ferroelectric and ferroelastic domains (according to our knowledge) in the widely used material- polycrystalline Lead Zirconium Titantae films. These findings will hopefully be published soon to aid the fundamental understanding of ferroelectricity as well as to constitute a better starting point for novel technologies based on the unique electro-mechanical coupling of ferroelectric materials.