Enhancing Strain Transfer in Multiferroics through Pure Phase Functional Gradients

该奖项的研究目标是研究通过使用纳米线创建的功能梯度的结构属性关系。使用纳米线来创建功能梯度是一种尚未探索的新方法，但可以在保持每个相的组成的同时提供显着改善的性能。功能梯度通常是通过在界面处混合陶瓷或前体材料而产生的，这是难以控制的，并且由于两相扩散导致的成分变化而可能导致较差的性能。这个问题在电陶瓷中是一个重要的问题，因为电陶瓷的性能与陶瓷的纯度密切相关。虽然这项研究将寻求确定应变转移的基本性质，通过纳米线界面，我们的努力将集中在梯度界面的多铁性材料的应用。目标是产生最高程度的多铁性耦合，同时开发一种新的方法来创建功能梯度，保持材料的相位和界面上的连通性，并直接测量所创建的应变梯度，以便为纳米级界面开发建模工具。该奖项的更广泛影响将提供一种新的方法来创建纳米级功能梯度，接口.这些努力将直接应用于日益增长的多铁性材料领域，并将重点关注多铁性材料应用的基础和应用挑战，从而为未来更有效地设计ME器件的广泛研究工作提供潜力。所提出的技术可以应用于广泛的应用，涉及不同材料之间的界面，包括热界面，半导体和复合材料以及许多新兴技术，提供积极的社会影响。除了提供对跨功能梯度的机制的更多理解，

The research objective of this award is to study the structure property relationships of functionalgradients created through the use of nanowires. The use of nanowires to create a functionalgradient is a novel approach that has not been explored, yet could provide significantly improvedperformance while maintaining the composition of each phase. A functional gradient is oftencreated through the blending of ceramic or precursor materials at the interface which is difficultto control and can lead to inferior properties due to compositional changes resulting fromdiffusion of the two phases. This issue is of principle concern in electroceramics where theproperties are strongly related to the purity of the ceramic. While the research will seek toidentify the fundamental properties of strain transfer across a nanowire interface, our efforts willbe focused by the application of the graded interface to multiferroic materials. The goal will be toproduce the highest degree of multiferroic coupling while developing a new methodology forcreating functional gradients that maintain the material's phase and connectivity across theinterface as well as producing direct measurement of the strain gradient created such thatmodeling tools can be developed for the nanoscale interface.The broader impacts of this this award will provide a new methodology to create a nanoscalefunctional gradient across an interface. The efforts will be directly applied to the growing field ofmultiferroic materials and will focus on both basic and applied challenges to the application ofmultiferroic materials and thus offers potential for a wide range of future research effortsapproaching more efficient design of ME devices. The proposed techniques could be applied to awide range of application that involve an interface between dissimilar materials including thermalinterfaces, semiconductors and composites as well as many emerging technologies that providepositive societal impact. Beyond providing an increased understanding of the mechanics across afunctional gradient, the resear