Nanomaterials, materials with features ranging from 1-100 nm, have been developed with many unique properties, and a variety of techniques have been developed to produce these materials in large volumes at low cost. However to date, we lack commercial methods to incorporate these materials and their unique properties into novel devices, or to build these functions into materials over larger length scales. One particularly exciting collection of nanomaterials are composites that can use electricity to change magnetic properties and vice-versa. These materials could lead to the realization of new types of electronic devices, including new types of memory and data storage. In this project we seek to develop novel methods for synthesizing and assembling these materials into larger-scale optical devices that could find application in sensors, optical integrated circuits, and in data transmission and storage. Importantly, this effort includes research to measure and verify that these materials behave as designed once integrated into a manufactured device. Such quality control, especially monitoring during manufacturing, is critical to enable commercialization of these materials. This project combines the efforts of materials scientists at the University of Florida and physicists at the University of South Carolina to provide a unique interdisciplinary research environment for student researchers, critical for not only discovery but for future societal benefit for materials with properties that span multiple traditional scientific disciplines.
This project addresses synthesis and assembly of devices built from multiferroic composite materials, i.e. materials that exhibit at least two, and sometimes three types of ferroic ordering in the same phase. In this project, activities center on biphasic fibers that combine a piezoelectric and a magnetostrictive material. The figure of merit for these multiferroics is the magnetoelectric coefficient, which measures the magnitude of the electric field generated when the multiferroic material is placed in an applied magnetic field. Using magnetic annealing and magnetic-field-directed self-assembly, research efforts will develop materials with enhanced magnetoelectric coefficients and assemble them into novel optical devices. In parallel, novel process metrologies will be implemented to characterize the properties of the fibers and devices built from them. These measurements will identify systematics and quantify magnetoelectric coupling in materials that are not amenable to more established characterization methodologies.
