S5 – Mesoscale Phenomena in Ferroic Nanostructures: From Patterns to Functionalities

Mesoscopic phenomena span length scales that are considerably larger than atomic-bond distances but are small enough that classical continuum physics with materials properties and behavior averaged over many domains, or regions 10–100 nm in size, does not apply. The involved physical processes are bridging quantum-mechanical and macroscopic-continuum materials descriptions, which makes them critically important for the design, modeling, growth, and characterization of ferroic nanostructures. Many such systems exhibit intriguing behavior with nontrivial dependence of their elastic, polar, and magnetic degrees of freedom—including domain pattern formation and evolution—on shape, size, and morphology. Additional interesting effects involve the influence of layering, composition variation, and diffusion.

This symposium brings together experts from academia, industry, and national laboratories to discuss current state-of-the-art in theoretical modeling, synthesis, characterization, processing, and applications of ferroic nanostructures, with an emphasis on the influence of morphological patterns (including domains) on physical properties and functional behavior.

Proposed Sessions

This symposium will emphasize the following themes related to ferroic nanostructures:

• Synthesis, characterization, and processing
• Chemistry and physics of ferroic materials at mesoscale
• Nano to micro to macro: size dependence of ferroic behavior and properties
• Structure, dynamics, and stability of ferroic domains
• Multiscale modeling of mesoscopic phenomena
• Applications involving electronic, magnetic, thermal, optical, and electrochemical functionalities 

Symposium Organizers

• Yogesh Sharma, Los Alamos National Laboratory, USA, ysharma@lanl.gov
• Edward Gorzkowski, Naval Research Laboratory, USA, edward.gorzkowski@nrl.navy.mil
• Serge M. Nakhmanson, University of Connecticut, USA, serge.nakhmanson@uconn.edu
• Seungbum Hong, KAIST, Daejeon, Republic of Korea, seungbum@kaist.ac.kr
• Yachin Ivry, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, Israel, ivry@technion.ac.il
• Matjaž Spreitzer, Jožef Stefan Institute, Slovenia, matjaz.spreitzer@ijs.si