[Spm] PFM workshop series

[Sergei V. Kalinin]

Dear Colleagues

We would like bring to your attention the workshop series on the 
Piezoresponse Force Microscopy and Nanoscale Electromechanics of Polar 
Materials. PFM has emerged as a powerful tool to explore and to study 
nanoscale phenomena in ferroelectric and multiferroic devices, as well 
as biological and polar macromolecular systems. Recently, PFM was 
extended to study coupling between polarization and electronic 
transport, as well as local phenomena in energy storage and generation 
materials and strongly-correlated oxides, making it directly relevant to 
the information and energy sciences and technology. The ubiquity of 
electromechanical couplings in nanoscale systems – from molecular 
electromotors to polar solids – suggests tremendous potential for this 
technique.

This year, the three PFM workshops are planned for 2010 as follows:

7^th Workshop will be held in Montreal, Canada, May 31st – June 4th, as 
a part of the Summer School on Advanced AFM Techniques and International 
Workshop on Piezoresponse and Conductive AFM. The contact persons are 
Andreas Ruediger, (ruediger at emt.inrs.ca) and Alexei Gruverman 
(agruverman2 at unlnotes.unl.edu).

8^th Workshop will be held in Beijing, China, August 25th – 27^th . The 
information on the workshop can be found at 
http://www.ustb.edu.cn/materials/files/pfm/International_Workshop.html. 
The contact person is Prof. Jiangyu Li (jjli at u.washington.edu and 
workshoppfm at yahoo.cn <mailto:workshoppfm at yahoo.cn>).

9^th Workshop will be held in the conjunction with the International 
Symposium on Ferroic Domains and Micro- to Nanoscopic structures 
(ISFD-10) in Prague, Czech Republic, Sept. 22nd-24th. Please visit 
http://palata.fzu.cz/isfd10/index.php?item=pfm for workshop details. The 
contact person are /Jiří/ Hlinka (hlinka at fzu.cz <mailto:hlinka at fzu.cz>) 
and Andrei Kholkin (kholkin at ua.pt <mailto:kholkin at ua.pt>).

All three workshops, conveniently located in America, Europe, and Asia, 
offer a combination of tutorial lectures by the advanced practitioners 
of PFM, topical lectures by leading scientists in the field, industrial 
lectures from PFM manufacturers, and poster sessions for attendees. It 
also includes extensive lab demos for participants to gain hand-on 
experience in PFM on various commercial systems, for which the attendees 
can bring their own samples for testing and examinations. The PFM 
conference (Prague) will also feature a series of invited and 
contributed talks by the attendees.

On behalf of the PFM workshop series organizers:
Sergei V. Kalinin
Andrei Kholkin
Jiangyu Li

-- 
Sergei V. Kalinin
co-Theme Leader for Functional Imaging on the Nanoscale
The Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences
and Materials Sciences and Technology Division
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Oak Ridge, TN 37922

Section Editor, Nanotechnology

Adjunct Associate Professor, 
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, 
University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Phone: (865) 241-0236
http://imaging.ornl.gov