Contact: Prof. Jean-Marc Triscone (Deputy director & Project leader - Project 5)

Team fall 2002

GHz surface acoustic wave filter written with atomic force microscopy

Growth, Characterization and Physical Properties of Unconventional Metals and Oxides
The group’s research focuses on a range of unconventional metals and correlated oxide systems, including dielectric and ferroelectric insulators, ferromagnetic metals and superconductors. The materials are fabricated as single crystals, epitaxial thin films, and heterostructures, and studied using standard transport, local probe and high pressure techniques.
Atomic force microscopy is used to study domain wall motion in epitaxial ferroelectric thin films, and explore possible applications, including non-volatile memories and ultra high frequency surface acoustic wave filters. Heterostructures alternating ferroelectric layers with superconducting or metallic oxides are used for local field effect experiments exploiting the non-volatile ferroelectric polarization field, while ferroelectric/dielectric structures with controlled periodicity allow new “designer” materials with tailored properties to be fabricated. A diamond anvil cell technique is used to study epitaxial oxide thin films at very high hydrostatic pressures. The electronic properties of heavy fermions systems close to phase transitions are tuned and studied using high pressure techniques.

References:
[1] T. Tybell et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 89, 097601 (2002).
[2] S. Gariglio et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 88, 067002 (2002).
[3] F. Le Marrec et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 80, 2338 (2002).
[4] D. Jaccard et al., Phys. Letters A299, 282 (2002).

Read the scientific article published in MaNEP Newsletter No. 6 (PDF 499 Ko)
Read a basic introduction on ferroelectricity and its applications
Read a basic introduction to scanning probe microscopy