New projects & Milestones
Scientific highlights
For a change, this year’s highlights have to do with two families of materials that are not ferroelectric.
- In the antiferroelectric archetype, PbZrO3, we have finally solved a long-standing puzzle about the magnitude and origin of its anomalous negative electrocaloric effect. P. Vales-Castro et al., “Origin of large negative electrocaloric effect in antiferroelectric PbZrO3”, Phys. Rev. B 103, 054112 (2021).
- In VO2, an archetypal Mott material with a metal-insulator transition, we have discovered a new tweedy structure –to our knowledge, this is a first in such kinds of materials. F. Sandiumenge et al, “Metallic Diluted Dimerization in VO2 Tweeds”, Adv.Mater.2021, 33, 2004374 (2021).
These discoveries are part of doctoral investigations by, respectively, Pablo Valés and Laura Rodriguez. Both scientists successfully defended their theses (with “cum laude” marks -congratulations!) against the odds during a pandemic year. We are very proud of their achievements, truly the top highlights of our group in 2021.
Projects
This year marked the start of our FET-Open Project (TSAR, ‘Topological Solitons in Antiferroics’) to study topological structures in antiferroelectrics. Meanwhile, we also continued to work on two national projects: one on functional oxide membranes (FOxMe) and the other, headed by Dr Neus Domingo, on the catalytical properties of ferroelectric surfaces (SurFer). In addition, the Swiss National Science Foundation has sponsored a postdocotoral research fellow, Dr Gabriele de Luca, to work on strain engineering of hafnia-zirconia (anti)ferroelectric thin films. Last but not least, a Marie Curie project was awarded to Dr David Pesquera to work on oxide membranes.