A to Z of Ferroelectric Applications

A to Z of Ferroelectric Applications

Apart from various applications, ferroelectric materials find many other application in day-to-day life of the human society, such as: a) electronic equipment, b) cell phones, c) medical diagnostic instrument, d) digital cameras, e) automobile gadgets, f) security systems, g) military and other type of sensors, h) piezoelectric transducers, i) four-phase mixing doublers, etc. Both lithium niobate and lithium tantalate, which are the “focus” materials in the present work, appear to be promising candidates as the key photonic materials for a variety of other devices, such as: j) optical parametric oscillators, k) nonlinear frequency converters, l) second-order nonlinear optical material, m) second harmonic generator devices, n) holography for memory devices, etc. Many of such devices include important nano-devices.

The importance of ferroelectrics has grown tremendously over the past decades, as it has been viewed for a long time as a topic in classical physics in that ferroelectricity can be described by the quantum mechanical ab initio theory, or ‘first principle’ calculations. Therefore, there are many other usages as: o) thin-film nano-scale device structures integrated onto Si chips making inroads into the semiconductor industry. 
Moreover, there are also recent prototype applications that include: p) ultrafast switching, q) cheap room-temperature magnetic-field detectors, r) piezoelectric nano-tubes for microfluidic systems, s) electrocaloric coolers for computers, t) phased-array radar, u) three-dimensional trenched capacitors for dynamic random access memories (DRAM), v) Terabit-per-square-inch ferroelectric arrays of lead zirconate titanate on Pt nano-wire interconnects, w) similar devices involving nanorings with 5-nm diameters. 
Finally, a set of very important applications in the field of instrumentation includes:  x) electron emission from ferroelectrics giving cheap and high-power microwave devices, as briefly mentioned above, y) miniature x-ray sources, and the last but not the least in very sophisticated z) miniature neutron sources for various structural measurements (e.g. scattering, diffraction, etc.). Many other new applications are expected to evolve in the future.
(Review in Progress)