The UK's National Physical Laboratory (NPL) is working to provide more reliable measurement of the piezoelectric properties of nanocrystals.
"By combining textural analysis, through electron backscatter diffraction, with piezoresponse force microscopy, quantitative measurements of the piezoelectric properties can be made at a scale of 25nm which is smaller than the domain size," said NPL.
This combination technique has been used to obtain data on the domain-resolved effective single crystal piezoelectric response of individual crystallites in Pb(Zr0.4Ti0.6)O3 ceramics.
"The results offer insight into the science of domain engineering and provide practical information for the future development of nano-structured ferroelectric materials for memory, nano-actuators, and sensors," said NPL.
NPL's speciality is in developing techniques that provide repeatable results.
"The problem with making things that are nano-sized is that it is very difficult to measure their performance," said researcher Tim Burnett. "Our research will therefore enable genuine comparisons to be made and promote a better understanding of the nanotechnology of electrical materials and devices."
For more information, the work has been published in the Journal of Applied Physics.