Studying Ferroelectricity in Barium Titanate Nanoparticles

Sandia National Laboratories Engineering/Physics, 2013-14

Liaison(s): Dr. Todd Monson
Advisor(s): Richard Haskell, Adrian Hightower
Students(s): Eric Puma (TL-POM), Sun Hwi Bang, Nate Bean, Jean-Claude DeSugny, Robert Gambee

Barium titanate (BTO) is a ferroelectric material used in the production of multi-layer ceramic capacitors. At the nano scale, BTO exhibits bewildering structural and dielectric behavior. We develop a test bench to measure the permittivity of nanoparticles, employing a combination of electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and computational modeling. We compare our results to structural measurements, including Raman and x-ray experiments, for a variety of particle sizes and synthesis methods.