Ferroelectricity in Langmuir-Blodgett Polymer Films

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9616246 Ducharme The purpose of this work is to explore the ferroelectric state, switching dynamics, and an unusual conductance switching phenomenon in ultrathin Langmuir-Blodget (LB) polymer films with thicknesses ranging from one to 100 or more monolayers. These films have potential application to nonvolatile computer memory (or data caching or data storage), uncooled infrared imaging devices, nonlinear capacitors, pyroelectric sensors, or acoustic transducers, among other possibilities. The proposed research has four interrelated components: 1) Investigation of Ferroelectric State properties such as the phase transition temperature, spontaneous polarization, Curie constant, and dielectric hysteresis. 2) Study of Low-Dimensional Ferroelectricity will be in films as thin as one monolayer. 3) Study of a novel conductance Switching phenomenon that intimately connected to bulk polarization switching. 4) Evaluation of Potential Applications uniquely suited to the LB ferroelectric polymers. Measurement techniques will include switching charge and current, pyroelectric responqe, conductance, and dielectric response as functions of temperature, electric field, and thickness. The results will provide unprecedented understanding of the ferroelectric state in polymers and in reduced-dimensionality systems and will reveal the salient features of the conductance switching phenomenon. The results will also provide a critical foundation for potential application of these inexpensive but versatile electronic materials to computer and transducer technologies. ***