Nanograin BaTiO3 Ceramics for Dielectric, Ferroelectric and Piezoelectric Applications

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NON-TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION: Every year 1,000 trillion new pieces of multilayer ceramic capacitors enter the market inside the consumer, industrial and military products, and as their sizes shrink their microstructure features are projected to approach the nanomaterial scale within the next decade. This project will focus on BaTiO3, the ceramic material used in these capacitors, to determine the most important material parameters required to propel continued advances into the next generations. The project will also provide rich educational and research opportunities to engage students and educators in the Philadelphia area and in the larger community. In particular, the University of Puerto Rico-Humacao will benefit by gaining internet access to some measurement instruments in the Penn laboratory. TECHNICAL DETAILS:This project will investigate nanograin BaTiO3 ceramics for possible dielectric, ferroelectric and piezoelectric applications. By varying the grain size, grain boundary charge and crystal stability of the nanograin ceramics, it will seek to engineer a tunable nanocomposite without apparent compositional inhomogeneity. The composite effect will rely on charge/defect-induced internal fields to smear structural transitions and clamp polarization, creating stable dielectrics with temperature-independent dielectric responses. Such possibility was not previously available in conventional ceramics because until the advent of nanomaterials, the width of the space charge zone has been much less than the grain size. The project will take advantage of a recent breakthrough in sintering technology that allows densification without grain growth, which avails nanograin BaTiO3 ceramics. Integrated research and educational activities built around laboratory discoveries will train new students in the field of nano electronic materials for future innovation and development.