What are Advanced Functional Materials?
Advanced functional materials are used to build devices that advance technology. Piezoelectric materials are one type of advanced functional material. Piezoelectrics combine mechanical material properties such as compressibility and strength with electrical properties such as conductivity and electric charge storage capability. This interplay makes piezoelectrics extremely useful as well as intriguing to study.
There are literally thousands of uses for piezoelectrics: medical devices (ultrasound baby imagers, and piezoelectric surgery), energy harvesting, gas grill igniters, sonar, microwave phase shifters, guitar pickups, audio speakers, robotics, pumps, ultrasonic motors, printers, and many more. Other advanced materials include ferromagnetic materials, ferroelectric materials, pyroelectric materials, multiferroic materials, photonic materials.
Our Research
CSUSB’s Center for Advance Functional Materials core interests are in materials of many types that undergo change in the presence of external stimuli, including electric fields, magnetic fields, and temperature changes. Many of these materials are polar (ferroelectric, piezoelectric, non-linear optical, etc.) and/or magnetic. When materials have both magnetic and electronic properties that can be independently manipulated, they are known as multiferroric. Functional materials are widely used to build devices in industries such as electronics & telecommunication, aerospace and medicine.
Our research vision will be accomplished via three distinct strands: (1) thin films and interfaces; (2) polymeric functional materials and blends; and (3) applied functional materials. Progress on these strands depends on our team’s shared expertise in synthesis and materials preparation, computational modeling, and investigating materials properties. Close collaboration between physicists and chemists at CSUSB and related scientists at our partners gives us unique insight to solving fundamental and applied problems in materials science.