Photo by Nancy Wong
King Lab Pioneer Technique to Visualize Anti-Ferroelectric Materials
Professor Sarah King became deeply involved in microscopy because she believes seeing is believing.
“I just love coming up with new ways to look at materials and being able to see things that nobody has seen before.”
Scientists like Dr. King use electron microscopy to study materials to find out how they work and then customize them for various uses. It is crucial to understand the electronic properties of materials to advance cutting-edge technologies. However, researchers have faced challenges in imaging certain kinds of materials and in turn, discovering their true properties and potential.
Now in a recent publication in Science Advances, the King Lab has made significant strides in imaging antiferroelectric materials, a class of materials with unique electrical properties that could open up potential applications in energy storage, sensors, and memory devices.
“It's going to play a critical role in the development of new materials.”
—Asst. Prof. Sarah King
Taking A Better Picture
In electronics and energy storage, antiferroelectric materials are extremely valuable because of their special arrangement of electric dipoles – arrangements of partial positive and negative charges – which perfectly cancel each other, resulting in no net positive or negative polarization in the material. However, applying an electric field to an antiferroelectric material allows you to switch it to a higher energy state where the electric dipoles don’t cancel each other out. This switching behavior makes them particularly fascinating to scientists and engineers looking to unlock their potential.
However, developing these materials has presented challenges, especially when it comes to imaging and characterizing them for modification. Traditional imaging techniques often lack the necessary resolution and contrast to effectively study these materials and their dynamics.
"One of the major hurdles is that we don't have a great way of determining whether something is antiferroelectric because we lack the means to visualize the domains," explains Dr. King. “What we've done in this paper is we have demonstrated a new method for emerging antiferroelectric materials on the nanoscale.”
Determined to see their goals clearly, her lab has now pioneered a fresh approach that enables researchers to finally see their domains.