Session 2B: Inaugural Lectures by Fellows/Associates

Tuning Of The Structural And Microstructural Instabilities In Ferroelectrics For Design Of High-performance Actuators And Development Of New Functionalities

The phenomenon of ferroelectricity was discovered 100 years ago. Over the years, thanks to the continuous discoveries of new materials, phenomena, and their applications in areas of great technological significance, ferroelectric materials continue to fascinate the scientific community. In this presentation, the speaker will focus on the research activities carried out by his group at IISc in the last few years on ferroelectric materials belonging to the oxide perovskite family. While the primary focus is directed at understanding the fundamental structural–microstructural mechanism to explain the interesting electromechanical behaviour of some members of this family, we have also discovered a new material system which exhibits a record high electro-strain response via a mechanism less known to the community. Currently, we are also studying the interesting structural/microstructural changes caused by electric-field and temperature with the view to tune the optical properties with such variables and find new potential applications.