Materials Colloquium 2020 - September, 9th, 16:30
Zoom
Chiara Gattinoni (Materials Theory, D-MATL, ETH Zürich)
A precise understanding of the surface and interface behavior of ferroelectric materials is necessary towards their use in promising applications such as memory storage or catalysis. In this seminar I will focus on the example of lead titanate and bismuth ferrite to describe how structural and electronic properties affect ferroelectricity at the nanoscale. I will show that surfaces and interfaces play a pivotal role in (de)stabilizing the ferroelectric polarization in thin films and nanoparticles. I will then investigate how the special properties of ferroelectric surfaces can be used to create efficient catalytic devices.