A Conference session on Domains in Ferroelectrics will be held in conjunction with the 8th International Conference on Ferroelectrics during the Summer, 1993 at NIST to address current research topics such as systems of domain walls and their interactions with each other, the thermodynamics and kinetics of domain wall configurations and domain walls that are both fer- roelectric as well as ferroelastic. There are many materials, such as relaxors, and devices, such as integrated ferroelectric thin film memories, in which these aspects are of central importance. Since these topics are usually not taught as such in graduate programs the conference organization is making a special effort to have a large student participation. Arrangements were made to expand the Conference session into an evening Workshop session to allow for in-depth discussions on critical subject areas. It is expected that top scientists in the field will attend, and that the Conference and Workshop sessions will provide an effective forum to discuss and delineate critical scientific issues, and to consider and define the approaches and techniques needed to address them. %%% An evaluation of the status of domains in ferroelectrics, and recommendations by the session participants for the emphasis of future work, and their assessment of the most important contem- porary research issues will be of great value to the understanding and development of ferroelectric and related materials, and for their subsequent utilization in fields such as microelectronics.
