This award supports Susanne Stemmer from Rice University in a collaboration with Christian Ruessel of the Department of Glass Chemistry at the University of Jena, Germany. The collaboration studies the titanate family of molecules, such as barium titanate, which have attracted attention recently for many important applications such as information storage devices or tunable microwave devices. Techniques that provide information about the distribution of defects within these microstructures are currently lacking. The cooperative work funded here will develop a method to quantify the point defect chemistry and dielectric properties of titanates almost down to the atomic level by means of electron energy-loss spectroscopy. The project benefits from synergy of expertise in defect-property relationships of multicomponent oxides and expertise in the synthesis of oxides from highly reduced melts. The research will also benefit from sharing characterization facilities and materials-synthesis facilities.
