The field of ferroelectricity is a very active one. Many hundreds of papers in this field are published each year and a large number of local and international conferences are held. The material in this book originally appeared in the Journal of Materials Science. The special issue entitled Frontiers of Ferroelectricity appeared as Volume 41, Issue 1 of the Journal of Materials Science in January 2006. Researchers and students should find great value in having this complete set of papers available in book form.

The book presents theory, fundamentals and applications of ferroelectricity. It describes the current levels of understanding of various aspects of the subject as presented by authorities in the field. Reviews and research reports cover the spectrum of ferroelectricity. Topics include relaxors, piezoelectrics, microscale and nanoscale studies, polymers and composites, unusual properties, and techniques and devices. The information in this book is intended for physicists, engineers and materials scientists working with ferroelectric materials including ceramics, single crystals, polymers, composites and even some biological materials.

Contenu
Self-assembled nanoscale ferroelectrics.- Factors influencing the piezoelectric behaviour of PZT and other morphotropic phase boundary ferroelectrics.- Polar nanoclusters in relaxors.- Recent progress in relaxor ferroelectrics with perovskite structure.- Flexoelectric effects: Charge separation in insulating solids subjected to elastic strain gradients.- Piezoelectric anisotropy: Enhanced piezoelectric response along nonpolar directions in perovskite crystals.- Voltage tunable epitaxial PbxSr(1?x)TiO3 films on sapphire by MOCVD: Nanostructure and microwave properties.- Studies on the relaxor behavior of sol-gel derived Ba(ZrxTi1?x )O3 (0.30?x?0.70) thin films.- Magnetoelectric coupling, efficiency, and voltage gain effect in piezoelectric-piezomagnetic laminate composites.- Piezoresponse force microscopy and recent advances in nanoscale studies of ferroelectrics.- Dielectric response of polymer relaxors.- The relaxor enigma charge disorder and random fields in ferroelectrics.- Properties of ferroelectric ultrathin films from first principles.- Fredholm integral equation of the Laser Intensity Modulation Method (LIMM): Solution with the polynomial regularization and L-curve methods.- Multilayer piezoelectric ceramic transformer with low temperature sintering.- A Monte Carlo simulation on domain pattern and ferroelectric behaviors of relaxor ferroelectrics.- Solid freeform fabrication of piezoelectric sensors and actuators.- Kinetics of ferroelectric domains: Application of general approach to LiNbO3 and LiTaO3.- Ferroelectric transducer arrays for transdermal insulin delivery.- Loss mechanisms and high power piezoelectrics.- Effect of electrical conductivity on poling and the dielectric, pyroelectric and piezoelectric properties of ferroelectric 03composites.- Properties of triglycine sulfate/poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene) 03 composites.- Near-field acoustic and piezoresponse microscopy of domain structures in ferroelectric material.- Normal ferroelectric to ferroelectric relaxor conversion in fluorinated polymers and the relaxor dynamics.