The New Year 2018 started with a ‘Domain Walls Symposium’ in Castle Leslie, attended by U. Bangert and A. Harvey, who informed the symposium attendees about the capabilities of the state-of-the-art TEM facilities at UL, which are required and will significantly contribute to research on domain walls.

The symposium was connected with a meeting regarding updates on progress of a US/Ireland Tripartite project (on which U. Bangert is Co-Investigator) funded by NSF, EPSRC and SFI, enabled and carried out through the cooperative effort of three institutions, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL), Queens University at Belfast (QUB) and the University of Limerick (UL). The aim of this project is to; (i) create conducting ferroelectric domain walls, (ii) characterise their properties and (iii) investigate, how they can be used in prototype nanoelectronic devices.

Conducting domain walls in ferroelectrics can act as sheet conductors with the same range of functional behaviour as seen in established 2D materials such as graphene. In addition, however, they have the unique property of being “agile” – they can be moved, injected and destroyed to allow new forms of dynamic electronic and so far unimaginable devices to be made. The symposium, hosted by QUB, was attended by international experts in the field, and following impressive presentations, led to intensive and extensive discussions tackling the unknowns and future objectives of the project, e.g. atomic structure and formation of domain walls.