Design and Processing of Novel Electronic Composite Materials

该奖项由宾夕法尼亚州立大学材料研究部颁发，旨在设计合成方法并获得对新型电子复合材料的理解，这些复合材料将表现出在组成材料中未观察到的不寻常特性，并且/或者它们的大小超出了其组成相或化合物的范围。凭借这一奖项，Bhalla、Cheng和Guo教授将应用新颖的加工方法来合成具有不同寻常磁电特性的微到纳米级微结构复合材料。用于制备复合材料的特殊加工方法有：i)在单模腔中微波烧结与电磁场分离加热处理，这使得金属陶瓷纳米结构能够快速致密化；ii)激光加热基底生长，以获得单晶复合纤维形式的高密度双相或共晶微纳米结构。由于铁电-铁磁性质在单一主体材料中是高度拮抗的，通过在强铁磁中引入高磁导率，在强铁电中引入高介电常数，并通过压电和磁致伸缩相互作用将它们弹性耦合，有可能实现必要的磁电对称性，并产生铁电-铁磁超材料。拟议的研究也将指向理解和建模的一个相关特征，即介电损耗在这些材料和一般的铁材料。此外，建模研究将扩展到预测高电磁系数的方向。该奖项的一个可能结果是在电子传感器、执行器和许多其他应用中提供新颖和改进的功能材料。该奖项将开发电子材料的新知识，包括其加工和表征，这将有利于研究生，科学家和工程师。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，这个奖项将加强这些活动，并将继续他们对教育推广的承诺。

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.