Sponsored by the American Chemical Society, the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the German Chemical Society, the symposium’s goal is to bring together highly qualified early-career scientists—30 each from Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States—to discuss the most advanced perspectives of chemical research.
“I will be presenting my group’s research on the synthesis of new oxides—ceramic materials. These materials were specifically designed to exhibit particular phenomena, namely ferroelectricity and piezoelectricity,” says Halasyamani. “With the former, the material can be switched between two states, whereas for the latter an external compression, literally squeezing, produces a voltage.”
Both phenomena are used in applications ranging from computer memory to micromotor devices.
Not only has Halasyamani’s group synthesized several new compounds that exhibit these phenomena, but they have determined the chemical and structural origin of the properties.
“We will use this knowledge to ‘design’ new materials that exhibit superior ferroelectric and piezoelectric behavior,” he says.
Halasyamani’s group is one of the few research groups that is working on creating new materials, from scratch, that exhibit ferroelectricity and piezoelectricity. Most current research involves synthesizing known materials and then including trace amounts of additives to improve their performance.
For more information on this work, please visit, http://www.chem.uh.edu/Faculty/Halasyamani/.