Design and Processing of Novel Electronic Composite Materials

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This award by the Division of Materials Research to Pennsylvania State University, University Park is to design synthetic approaches and gain understanding of novel electronic composites that will exhibit unusual properties that are not observed in the constituent materials and/or that their magnitudes are out of range accountable by their constituent phases or compounds. With this award, Professors Bhalla, Cheng and Guo will apply novel processing approaches to synthesize micro to nanoscale microstructured composite materials that have unusual magnetoelectric properties. Special processing approaches that will be used for the preparation of the composites are: i) microwave sintering in a single mode cavity with electric-magnetic field separated heating processing, which permits rapid densification of metal:ceramic nanostructure; and ii) laser heated pedestal growth to obtain highly dense diphasic or eutectic micro- and nano-structures in forms of single crystal composite fibers. As ferroelectric-ferromagnetic properties are highly antagonistic to obtain in a single host material, by introducing a high permeability into a strong ferromagnetic, a high permittivity into a strong ferroelectric, and coupling them elastically, through piezoelectric and magnetostrictive interactions, it is possible to achieve the necessary magnetoelectric symmetry and to generate ferroelectric:ferromagnetic MetaMaterials improvement over the present single phase. The proposed studies will also be directed towards understanding and modeling of one of the associated features, namely the dielectric loss in these materials and in ferroic materials in general. The modeling studies, in addition, will be extended to predict the directions of the high electromagnetic coefficient.One of the possible outcomes of this award would be to provide novel and improved functional materials in electronic sensors, actuators and a number of other applications. New knowledge on electronic materials that would be developed by this award including their processing and characterization will be beneficial to graduate students, scientists and engineers. Penn State University has a long history in contributing to the science and engineering educational needs of the country, and this award would augment these activities and would continue their commitment to educational outreach.