Advanced modeling of ferroic materials

Excerpt

Ferroic materials play an important role in many modern technical devices ranging from consumer market items to applications in information technologies, high-end equipment for automotive, aircraft and spacecraft, and medical technology. Permanent magnets are the best-known ferroic material systems. Their magnetic ordering is due to the ferromagnetic phase transition. Permanent magnets are then typically stabilized by defects to avoid demagnetization during use. The multitude of electrical motors, transformers, and most other inductors accompany our daily life. They rely on these magnetic materials. Different from the magnetic systems, ferroelectric materials exhibit local electric order. Their largest market resides in electrical capacitors due to the large associated dielectric constant. The second largest market is piezoelectrics yielding a coupling between electrical and mechanical fields. Ferroelastic materials have recently gained increased interest in the context of smart structures including medical applications. Shape memory alloys are presently their most investigated subclass. …