Asylum Research has announced eight grants for early adopters to explore the capabilities and applications of the Band Excitation (BE) technique.
The R+D100 BE method is a fast and sensitive technique that allows mapping of conservative interactions and nonlinearities, and energy dissipation of materials on the nanoscale.
It is said to show great promise for understanding and mitigating energy losses in magnetic, electrical and electromechanical processes and technologies.
Grants valued at up to USD50,000 (GBP33,000) per grant have been awarded to: Matt Dawber, Stony Brook University, 'Accurate and advanced characterization of the piezoelectric figures of merit for tailored ferroelectric superlattices'; Alexei Gruverman, University of Nebraska, 'Band Excitation scanning probe microscopy for nanoscale studies of bio-organic polymers'; Brian Huey, University of Connecticut, 'Band Excitation methods for novel investigations of phase-change materials and fuel-cell systems'; Jiangyu Li, University of Washington, 'Band Excitation for quantitative scanning probe microscopy of magnetoelastic coupling in Galfenol'; Lane Martin/Scott MacLaren, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, 'Band Excitation studies of losses in local switching of modern ferroelectric and multiferroic thin films'; Gunter Moeller/George Papakonstantopoulos, Arkema, 'Band Excitation AFM to develop a dynamic mechanical analysis method for polymers'; Brian Rodriguez, University College of Dublin, 'Decoupling elastic and electromechanical responses using band excitation scanning probe microscopy'; Neil Thompson/Colin Grant/Nagatha Wijayathunga, University of Leeds, 'Band Excitation AFM of collageneous materials'.
