Design and Processing of Novel Electronic Composite Materials

该奖项由材料研究部授予宾夕法尼亚州立大学，大学园区，旨在设计合成方法并了解新型电子复合材料，这些复合材料将显示出组成材料中未观察到的不同寻常的特性，和/或其大小超出了其组成相或化合物的范围。获得这一奖项后，巴拉、程和郭教授将应用新的加工方法来合成具有不同寻常的磁电性能的微到纳米级微结构复合材料。用于制备复合材料的特殊处理方法是：i)在单模腔中采用电磁场分离加热的微波烧结工艺，从而实现金属：陶瓷纳米结构的快速致密化；以及ii)激光加热基座生长，以单晶复合纤维的形式获得高度致密的双相或共晶微米和纳米结构。由于在单一主体材料中获得的铁电-铁磁性质是高度对立的，通过在强铁磁体中引入高磁导率，在强铁电体中引入高介电常数，并通过压电和磁致伸缩相互作用将它们弹性耦合，有可能获得必要的磁电对称性，并产生铁电：铁磁超材料，其改善了目前的单相。拟议的研究还将针对其中一个相关特征的理解和建模，即这些材料和一般铁性材料中的介电损耗。此外，模型研究还将扩展到预测高电磁系数的方向。该奖项的可能结果之一将是在电子传感器、执行器和许多其他应用中提供新颖和改进的功能材料。该奖项将开发的有关电子材料的新知识，包括其加工和表征，将对研究生、科学家和工程师有益。宾夕法尼亚州立大学在为国家的科学和工程教育需求做出贡献方面有着悠久的历史，这一奖项将加强这些活动，并将继续致力于教育推广。

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.