2025 MRS Spring Meeting & Exhibit

Symposium EL08-Ferroic Materials and Heterostructures

Recent progress in the synthesis of (anti-)ferroic materials and heterostructures has led to the discovery of new physical properties and conceptually new application paradigms for beyond-CMOS computing schemes. In this class of materials, the interplay between charge, spin, lattice, and orbital degrees of freedom leads to a wide range of fascinating quantum phenomena not observed in conventional semiconducting compounds. These include chirality, magnetoelectricity, and systems with multiple order parameters (e.g., multiferroics). Furthermore, recent advances in synthesis have enabled the tailoring of symmetry and competing interactions to yield topologically non-trivial polar and magnetic textures. The beauty and connections of the unifying scientific concepts in materials with electric and/ magnetic order are mutually beneficial and have become a strong motivation for interdisciplinary activities, propelled by the recent developments in theory, synthesis, and characterization.

This symposium focuses on (anti-)ferroics, related boundaries/interfaces and textures rather than excitations. Albeit abstracts that investigate switching kinetics and dynamics in these systems are encouraged. This symposium aims to bring together experts and young scientists with an interest in synthesis and multiscale characterization of controlled (anti-)ferroic materials and interfaces, heterostructures, and nanostructures. The organizers encourage the submission from academic, national lab, and industry researchers who seek to advance the state-of-the-art in bulk and thin film synthesis, engineering of (anti-)ferroic order with strain, interfaces, defects, disorder and scaling/dimension, spectroscopic and time-domain measurements of ferroic behavior.


Topics will include:

  • Ferroelectrics and antiferroelectrics
  • Magnetic, multiferroic, and magnetoelectric materials
  • Heterostructures of, and interfaces in, thin films and superlattices
  • Non-collinear, incommensurate, and chiral textures in magnetic and polar materials
  • Topological order in magnetic and polar materials
  • Two-dimensional and freestanding functional materials and thin films
  • Functional domain walls in ferroics and anti-ferroics
  • Advanced atomic resolution and operando probes of (anti-)ferroic orders, scale bridging and correlated characterizations
  • Theory of ferroic systems, non-collinear magnetic and electric dipole textures and their switching dynamics

Invited Speakers:

  • Nazanin Bassiri-Gharb (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)
  • Laura Begon-Lours (ETH Zürich, Switzerland)
  • Lucas Caretta (Brown University, USA)
  • Gustau Catalan (Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Spain)
  • Neus Domingo Marimon (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA)
  • Catherine Dubourdieu (Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, Germany)
  • Ismail El Baggari (Harvard University, USA)
  • Vincent Garcia (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France)
  • Marty Gregg (Queen's University Belfast, United Kingdom)
  • Sinead Griffin (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA)
  • Alexei Gruverman (University of Nebraska–Lincoln, USA)
  • Jorge Iniguez (Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, Belgium)
  • Lynette Keeney (Tyndall National Institute, Ireland)
  • Lane Martin (Rice University, USA)
  • Sophie Morley (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA)
  • Julia Mundy (Harvard University, USA)
  • Beatriz Noheda (University of Groningen, Netherlands)
  • Patrycja Paruch (University of Geneva, Switzerland)
  • Roger Proksch (Oxford Instruments, USA)
  • Ramamoorthy Ramesh (Rice University, USA)
  • YuTsun Shao (University of Southern California, USA)
  • Nicola Spaldin (ETH Zürich, Switzerland)
  • Nives Strkalji (Institute of Physics of the University of Zagreb, Croatia)
  • Nagajaran Valanoor (University of New South Wales, Australia)
  • Pavlo Zubko (University College London, United Kingdom)

Symposium Organizers

Michele Conroy
Imperial College London
Materials
United Kingdom

John Heron
University of Michigan
Materials Science and Engineering
USA

Dennis Meier
Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Department of Materials Science and Engineering
Norway

Morgan Trassin
ETH Zürich
Department of Materials
Switzerland

Topics

chemical vapor deposition (CVD) (deposition) epitaxy molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) operando scanning probe microscopy (SPM) scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM)