Date of Graduation

5-2009

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Microelectronics-Photonics (PhD)

Degree Level

Graduate

Department

Microelectronics-Photonics

Advisor/Mentor

Bellaiche, Laurent

Committee Member

Vyas, Reeta

Second Committee Member

Salamo, Gregory J.

Third Committee Member

Naseem, Hameed A.

Fourth Committee Member

Fu, Huaxiang

Fifth Committee Member

Vickers, Kenneth G.

Keywords

Pure sciences; Barium strontium titanate; Effective Hamiltonian; Strontium; Titanate

Abstract

"Barium Strontium Titanate (BaxSr1-xTiO3 or BST) is a Perovskite alloy of interest for both technological and intellectual reasons. Its ferroelectric and piezoelectric properties make it useful in a variety of electric components such as transducers and actuators, and BST in particular is a material of interest for the development of a ferroelectric RAM for computers. The inclusion of SrTiO3, an incipient ferroelectric, and the fact that the properties of a BST system depend strongly on its relative composition of BaTiO3 and SrTiO3 (ST), make also this a material of high interest. Compositionally graded systems are of further interest , partly because their compositional grading leads to a built-in polarization gradient. Due to this, these systems could act as transcapacitors, devices which act as charge amplifiers in much the same way that transistors act as current amplifiers.

Here, compositionally graded BST systems were modeled using a first-principles derived effective Hamiltonian method within Monte-Carlo simulation. (6) The graded systems under consideration had an average Ba composition of 70%. These systems were modeled under stress-free conditions, as well as, under epitaxial strain due to a SrTiO3 substrate."

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