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IRG 1

Designing Functionality into Layered Ferroics

IRG1, Designing Functionality into Layered Ferroics, will showcase materials discovery by design for electric field control of electronic, optical, magnetic and structural response of materials starting from the level of atoms. The goal is to design and discover fundamental new mechanisms and material classes of acentric layered oxides with strong coupling to spin, charge, and lattice degrees of freedom. An unprecedented expansion of ferroic families in layered oxides – a vast and largely unexplored materials class with unique control knobs in chemistry, topology, and geometry – will enable the design of ferro- & ferri-electricity, magnetoelectricity, multiferroicity, and gradient-driven effects. We will counterpoise competing phases with colossal properties to transform otherwise nonpolar materials into strongly polar ones and will couple electrical, magnetic and structural order parameters. Group theory, materials informatics, first-principles DFT, model Hamiltonians, and phase-field modeling will predict new ferroic systems and guide experimental efforts. Potential new technologies include room temperature electric field control of ferromagnetism, highly nonlinear optical materials, high temperature piezoelectrics, GHz electronics, and electric field control of correlated phenomena.