Discovery of light-induced ferroelectricity in strontium titanate

Light can be used not only to measure materials' properties, but also to change them. Especially interesting are those cases in which the function of a material can be modified, such as its ability to conduct electricity or to store information in its magnetic state.

A team led by Andrea Cavalleri from the Max Planck Institute for the Structure and Dynamics of Matter in Hamburg have used terahertz frequency light pulses to transform a non-ferroelectric material into a ferroelectric one.

Ferroelectricity is a state in which the constituent lattice is polarized in one specific direction, forming a macroscopic electrical polarization. The ability to reverse polarization makes ferroelectric materials particularly suitable for digital information encoding and processing. The discovery of a light-induced ferroelectric is highly relevant for a new generation of high-speed devices, and is presented in the journal Science.

Read more at Phys.org

Image Credit: Joerg M. Harms

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