The functional electroceramics market is multibillion pounds in value and growing year by year. Electroceramic components are vital to the operation of a wide variety of home electronics, mobile communications, computer, automotive and aerospace systems. The UK ceramics industry tends to focus on a number of specialist markets and there are new opportunities in sensors, communications, imaging and related systems as new materials are developed. To enable the UK ceramics community to benefit from the new and emerging techniques for the processing and characterisation of functional electroceramics a series of collaborative exchanges will be undertaken between the three UK universities (Manchester, Sheffield and Imperial College) and universities and industry in Europe (Austria, Germany, Russia, Czech Republic), the USA and Asia (Japan, Taiwan and Singapore). These exchanges will enable the UK researchers (particularly those at an early stage of their careers) to learn new experimental and theoretical techniques. This knowledge and expertise will be utilised in the first instance in the new bilateral collaborative projects, and transferred to the UK user communities (UK universities and UK industry). A number of seminars and a two day Workshop will be held to help the dissemination of knowledge.

A major problem for photovoltaics is the lack of a fast and accurate energy rating for new devices and modules. Currently, methods for predicting the energy yield for a given device are either too simplistic, especially with regard to emerging technologies, or long-measurement campaigns are required. This problem will be solved by developing an energy rating based on direct laboratory measurements and thus not be based on simplifications, reducing the time needed for realistic measurement campaigns from months to hours. At the heart of this method is a novel measurement apparatus, which will allow among other things the generation of variable irradiance spectra, closely matched to those experienced in real outdoor operation. A novel methodology will be developed to evaluate technologies currently at the development stage and an extensive validation of the approach will be carried out. Theoretical work will be undertaken to underpin the development of this new approach to energy rating of solar modules.

The traditional view of the ordering of polarisation or magnetisation in both ferroelectrics and ferromagnets is that local dipoles or magnetic moments are arranged into neat rows and columns, and that boundaries between neatly arranged groups must strictly conform to the crystallography of the host material (conventional stripe domains). However, recent experimental research in three-dimensionally size-constrained soft ferromagnets has revealed the existence of completely different domain states which form into vortices. As with many aspects of behaviour in ferromagnetism, analogous properties in the behaviour of the electrical polarisation in ferroelectrics is often seen, and recent modelling strongly suggests that such vortex domain states should also exist in ferroelectrics. Differences in the energetics between ferromagnets and ferroelectrics means that such unusual behaviour is only expected to dominate whenever ferroelectric dimensions are reduced to the order of ~10 nm. The creation of such small structures and the characterisation of their domain states represents a serious challenge to experimentalists involved in ferroelectric research and yet the potential for new discovery is immense. Further, simple vortex structures may only be the tip of the ice-berg, as much more exotic domain patterns have been postulated: for example some theorists have suggested the possibility of an electrostatic solenoid-analogue. Given the research performed to date, and the postulations made by theorists, the creation of three-dimensionally constrained nanostructures in ferroelectrics, and the subsequent analysis of their domain characteristics, clearly represents an exciting and challenging problem. This project will address this area of research by combining expertise in nanoscale ferroelectric fabrication with specialist characterisation techniques such as electron holography, second-harmonic near field optics, nano-Raman spectroscopy and scanning probe microscopy. The programme builds on an already established successful collaboration between ferroelectric activities in Queen's University Belfast and Cambridge, and this is augmented by international experts in specifically chosen characterisation techniques.

The traditional view of the ordering of polarisation or magnetisation in both ferroelectrics and ferromagnets is that local dipoles or magnetic moments are arranged into neat rows and columns, and that boundaries between neatly arranged groups must strictly conform to the crystallography of the host material (conventional stripe domains). However, recent experimental research in three-dimensionally size-constrained soft ferromagnets has revealed the existence of completely different domain states which form into vortices. As with many aspects of behaviour in ferromagnetism, analogous properties in the behaviour of the electrical polarisation in ferroelectrics is often seen, and recent modelling strongly suggests that such vortex domain states should also exist in ferroelectrics. Differences in the energetics between ferromagnets and ferroelectrics means that such unusual behaviour is only expected to dominate whenever ferroelectric dimensions are reduced to the order of ~10 nm. The creation of such small structures and the characterisation of their domain states represents a serious challenge to experimentalists involved in ferroelectric research and yet the potential for new discovery is immense. Further, simple vortex structures may only be the tip of the ice-berg, as much more exotic domain patterns have been postulated: for example some theorists have suggested the possibility of an electrostatic solenoid-analogue. Given the research performed to date, and the postulations made by theorists, the creation of three-dimensionally constrained nanostructures in ferroelectrics, and the subsequent analysis of their domain characteristics, clearly represents an exciting and challenging problem. This project will address this area of research by combining expertise in nanoscale ferroelectric fabrication with specialist characterisation techniques such as electron holography, second-harmonic near field optics, nano-Raman spectroscopy and scanning probe microscopy. The programme builds on an already established successful collaboration between ferroelectric activities in Queen's University Belfast and Cambridge, and this is augmented by international experts in specifically chosen characterisation techniques.