JUNE 9, 2004
All of our current information technology relies on devices that process information as binary ones and zeroes. Ferroelectric materials are of special interest to developers of the next generation of such devices because they exhibit polarized electronic states that can represent bits of information. Moreover, these materials retain their polarization states without consuming electrical power,
making ferroelectrics the subject of intense study for nonvolatile memory applications in which data is stored even when the power is turned off. One problem, however, is polarization fatigue; after a
number of cycles, the switchable polarization begins to taper off, rendering the device unusable. Recently, a team of researchers from the University of Wisconsin, Bell Laboratories, and the University of Michigan used the x-ray synchrotron at the Advanced Photon Source (APS) to study the micron-scale details of polarization fatigue in ferroelectric oxides.