Journal Club Forum for April 15th: Fracture of Ferroelectrics
Ferroelectric materials have seen applications as actuators (the fuel injection system in the latest BMWs), sensors (naval sonar systems), and ferroelectric nonvolatile random access memories (FRAMs). For actuators and sensors it is the piezoelectric behavior of these materials that is exploited, while for FRAMs the ability of the material to “switch” polarization states is the essential feature for the application.