Physical materials science & Artificial materials | Inorganic Materials Science (IMS)

During the last decade a tremendous progress has been made in the fabrication of (complex) oxide thin films. To name a few, these are the epitaxial growth technique, understanding of the properties of their defect structure, atomic-level control of their layering, the manipulation of the oxygen contents and dopant densities, etc.

With our development of pulsed laser deposition (PLD) with control at an atomic level using high-pressure reflection high-energy electron diffraction we are able to control the growth of these materials and introduced new growth manipulation techniques, like pulsed laser interval deposition. At present, extremely sharp and homogeneous interfaces can be realized and this is, for example, yet utilized in magnetic tunnel junctions in the ferromagnetic ‘bad metal’ SrRuO3. The possibility to use building blocks of complex materials (complex means materials build of more than 2 elements) enables the design of artificial superstructures with atomically sharp interfaces with enhanced functionalities.

Right now, the following projects are going on in this research area:

Ferroelectric materials Material science has come to the nano-scale where material properties are dictated by specific atomic structuring and/or combination of materials.
PZT is a well known ferro-electric material which can have, depending on Temperature and Zr/Ti ratio, different structure phases.

Nonlinear optical properties of materials Besides commonly seen linear optical properties of materials like refraction and absorption, materials respond in a nonlinear way to strong light fields. Growing materials in a particular fashion or making new combinations may lead to such a strong nonlinear response. What materials or designs work best is studied in this research area.