(05/05/2016)

Press Release: Nature News and Views

Materials science: Clockwork at the atomic scale

Design rules for exotic materials known as polar metals have been put into practice in thin films. The findings will motivate studies of how a phenomenon called screening can be manipulated to generate new phases in metals. more »

(04/20/2016)

Press Release: UW-Madison News

New material combines useful, typically incompatible properties

Mild-mannered Dr. Jekyll and malicious Mr. Hyde were opposite aspects of the same man, and their story ended in tragedy because the two couldn’t peacefully coexist.Most materials, too, are capable of being only one thing at a time, but a team of engineers and physicists at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have created an entirely new material in which completely contradictory properties can coexist. more »

(10/28/2015)

Press Release: Nanotechweb.org

Ferroelectricity goes nanoscale

Ferroelectric materials have a permanent dipole moment, like their ferromagnetic counterparts. However, in ferroelectrics, the dipole moment is electric and not magnetic and so can be oriented using electric fields rather than magnetic ones. This opens up a host of novel device applications because it allows electrically digital information to be stored in ferroelectric thin films, something that might be exploited for making computer memory chips. However, the problem is that these materials generally lose their ferroelectricity as they become thinner, which obviously limits their usefulness in nanoelectronics. more »

(09/21/2015)

Press Release: UW-Madison News

Researchers discover the emergence of crucial properties as nanoelectric devices decrease in size

Closely integrating both theory and experiments, a multidisciplinary team of researchers has discovered that reducing the size of certain electronic devices can cause them to become ferroelectric, or spontaneously polarized. In addition to carving a path toward smaller and more convenient devices with increased storage capacity, this discovery will allow researchers to explore diverse nanoelectric functions in low-dimensional material systems. more »