Multifunctional Oxide Heterostructures

This book is devoted to the rapidly developing field of oxide thin-films and heterostructures. Oxide materials combined with atomic-scale precision in a heterostructure exhibit an abundance of macroscopic physical properties involving the strong coupling between the electronic, spin, and structural degrees of freedom, and the interplay between magnetism, ferroelectricity, and conductivity. Recent advances in thin-film deposition and characterization techniques made possible the experimental realization of such oxide heterostructures, promising novel functionalities and device concepts.

The book consists of chapters on some of the key innovations in the field over recent years, including strongly correlated oxide heterostructures, magnetoelectric coupling and multiferroic materials, thermoelectric phenomena, and two-dimensional electron gases at oxide interfaces. The book covers the core principles, describes experimental approaches to fabricate and characterize oxide heterostructures, demonstrates new functional properties of these materials, and provides an overview of novel applications.

Evgeny Tsymbal is a Charles Bessey Professor at the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) and the Director of the UNL's Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC).
Evgeny Tsymbal's research is focused on computational materials science aiming at the understanding of fundamental properties of advanced ferromagnetic and ferroelectric nanostructures and materials relevant to nanoelectronics and spintronics. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, Semiconductor Research Corporation, the Office of Naval Research, the Department of Energy, Seagate Technology, and the W. M. Keck Foundation.
Evgeny Tsymbal is a fellow of the American Physical Society, a fellow of the Institute of Physics, UK, and a recipient of the UNL's College of Arts & Sciences Outstanding Research and Creativity Award (ORCA).

Elbio Dagotto is a Distinguished Professor of Physics at the University of Tennessee, and Distinguished Scientist at the Materials Science and Technology Division of Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He specializes in the study of model Hamiltonians for systems where strong correlations among the electrons play a fundamental role, using a variety of many-body approximations particularly computational techniques. Dagotto's research has been mainly supported by the National Science Foundation and by the Department of Energy.
Dagotto is Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the American Physical Society. He was member of the Solid State Sciences Committee of the National Academy of Sciences and divisional editor of the Physical Review Letters. As of September 2011, Dagotto has over 300 publications (h=62), and has directed the work of 13 graduate students and 24 postdoctoral assistants.

Chang-Beom Eom is currently a Harvey D. Spangler Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research focuses on epitaxial thin film heterostructures of complex oxides, including ferroelectrics, piezoelectrics, multiferroics, superconductors, and novel two-dimensional electron gases at oxide interfaces, with an emphasis on understanding fundamental solid state phenomena and developing novel device applications.

Ramamoorthy Ramesh is currently the Plato Malozemoff Chair Professor in Materials Science and Physics at University of California, Berkeley. His current research interests include thermoelectric and photovoltaic energy conversion in complex oxide heterostructures. He has published extensively on the synthesis and materials physics of complex oxide materials. He received the Humboldt Senior Scientist Prize and Fellowship to the American Physical Society (2001). In 2005, he was elected a Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science as well as the David Adler Lectureship of the American Physical Society. In 2007, he was awarded the Materials Research Society David Turnbull Lectureship Award and in 2009, he was elected Fellow of MRS and is the recipient of the 2010 APS McGroddy New Materials Prize. He is currently serving as the Director of the Dollar a Watt, SunShot program at the U.S. Department of Energy, overseeing the R&D activities of the Solar Program.