CBE & MSE:Engineering Functional Properties in Complex Oxide Systems

Abstract: Complex oxides possess a wide range of intriguing and technologically relevant functional properties including ferromagnetism, ferroelectricity and superconductivity. Furthermore, the interfaces of complex oxides have been shown to exhibit unexpected functional properties not found in the constituent materials. These functional properties arise due to various structural and chemical changes as well as electronic and/or magnetic interactions occurring over nanometer length scales at interfaces, and they have the potential to be harnessed to enable new, more versatile, and energy efficient devices. In this talk, I will present some of our recent work investigating the interfacial interactions that occur at interfaces between two ferromagnetic layers, and discuss size-dependent phenomena as complex oxide thin films and heterostructures are patterned down to nano-/microscale dimensions. While these interfacial interactions have been widely studied in metallic systems, fundamental differences are observed in complex oxide systems. In particular, I will demonstrate how the use of synchrotron radiation-based characterization techniques allow us to gain a fundamental understanding of the underlying mechanisms associated with these interfacial interactions. These results demonstrate how the many competing interactions in complex oxide heterostructures and microstructures open up new intriguing opportunities to tailor their functional properties for future device applications.

Bio: Yayoi Takamura received her bachelor's degree from Cornell University in 1998 and her master's degree and doctorate from Stanford University in 2000 and 2004, respectively, all in the field of materials science and engineering. She was a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley with Yuri Suzuki in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering before joining the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at UC Davis in July 2006. Her research focuses on the growth of complex oxide thin films, heterostructures and nanostructures and the characterization of the novel functional properties associated with their interfaces. Takamura is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award and the DARPA Young Faculty Award.

Host: Professor Julie Schoenung