A great development in the synchrotron scattering techniques allows these days not only to study an average structure of crystalline materials but also to reach and quantitatively describe nanoscale correlations[1]. This is exactly the scale that is needed for understanding of macroscopic properties in modern ferroelectric materials which are by design heterogeneous on the atomic level.

The aim of this PhD project will be to conduct synchrotron experiments and apply cutting-edge data analysis approaches (e.g. 3D pair distribution function) in studies of materials that have nanoscale fluctuations of ferroelectric dipoles in the form of domains/clusters or more complicated topological objects like vortices or skyrmions.

In particular, we seek a PhD student interested to contribute to the team effort aimed to bring to the fore a completely new family of materials and novel phenomena related to the skyrmion and vortex textures[2].

Literature:

[1] M. Pasciak et al, PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS 120, 167601 (2019).
[2] K. C. Erb and J. Hlinka, PHYSICAL REVIEW B 102, 024110 (2020).