9403606 Cross During a two-year research visit, Dr. Cross will pursue a cooperative project with Nobuo Kamehara, Inorganic Materials and Polymers Laboratory, Fujitsu Corporation, to prepare and evaluate the electrical properties of new ferroelectric materials. Their research will focus on producing thin films of various ferroelectric materials on different substrates and developing empirical models of the ferroelectric material properties. Because of their superior conductive properties, ferroelectric materials are being studied by electronic manufacturers with the hopes of using them to further reduce the size of semiconductor devices. Although ferroelectric materials exhibit excellent properties in their bulk crystalline form, reproducing the bulk properties in thin films has been extremely difficult. Regardless of the technique, producing a homogeneous chemical composition throughout the film is difficult. Cross and Kamehara will design a matrix of thin film samples using a wide range of quantitative and qualitative variables: chemical composition, electrodes, sputtering targets, pressure, temperature, power density, etc. After different ferroelectric materials are deposited on various substrates, the team will measure the electrical properties of the materials and use that data as a basis for developing empirical models. The team then plans to test their empirical models on piezoelectric materials and finally to use their models to design future semiconductor devices. ***
