{"id":11390,"date":"2026-04-24T03:10:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T03:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/24\/making-waves-in-nano-material-science-flinders-university\/"},"modified":"2026-04-24T03:10:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T03:10:13","slug":"making-waves-in-nano-material-science-flinders-university","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/04\/24\/making-waves-in-nano-material-science-flinders-university\/","title":{"rendered":"Making waves in nano material science &#8211; Flinders University"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>           <label>select a category<\/label>         <br \/>           <label>Archives<\/label>         <br \/>           <label>Search             News          <\/label>         <br \/>Just as swirly, wave-like patterns can appear on computer screen when pixels do not align, new research led by Flinders University is investigating atomic-scale \u2018moir\u00e9 patterns\u2019 in the promising field of ferroelectricity.<br \/>The new study, with experts at Monash University and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, seeks inroads into electrical and optical science by exploring these complex \u2018superlattice\u2019 patterns in various ways to create new energy and material capabilities.<br \/>\u201cSimilar to the pixel example, we can overlay single-atom thin layers in non-aligned ways to achieve physical properties not present in regular repetitive materials \u2013 including superconductivity, special insulating and conductive states, and ferroelecticity,\u201d says <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flinders.edu.au\/people\/pankaj.sharma\">Dr Pankaj Sharma<\/a>, from the Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology at Flinders University.<br \/>\u201cWe do not fully understand how these structures behave, but early experiments reveal some unusual electronic and optical effects \u2013 suggesting that moir\u00e9 ferroelectric materials could play an important role in future low-energy nanoelectronics and photonics applications.\u201d<br \/>Alongside magnetism, ferroelectricity involves electrical charges within the metal material instead of magnetic poles.\u00a0 In certain materials, tiny electric dipoles line up to create an electric polarisation which can be switched around using an applied voltage.<br \/>The latest research, published in <a href=\"https:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1002\/sstr.202500776\"><em>Small Structures<\/em><\/a>, used advanced microscopy and other techniques to explore polarisation textures and the conditions under which they form in moir\u00e9 materials.<br \/>Coauthor Josh Edwards, a physics PhD student in the Sharma Lab, says the potential impact of carefully stacked thin layers on top of each other is significant.<br \/>\u201cThese tiny polar structures can respond very quickly to a range of external stimuli and could therefore potentially outperform similar magnetic structures that are currently being explored for computing technologies such as high-density memory and brain-inspired computing systems,\u201d he says.<br \/>The new moir\u00e9 materials also had the potential to be engineered to carry ferroelectricity and polarisation in many complex ways \u2013 both in the individual layers and chiral textures at nanoscale (see Figure below<img loading=\"lazy\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-31181\" src=\"https:\/\/news.flinders.edu.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Fig-1-Moire-experiments.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"872\" height=\"1035\" srcset=\"https:\/\/news.flinders.edu.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Fig-1-Moire-experiments.jpg 872w, https:\/\/news.flinders.edu.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Fig-1-Moire-experiments-253x300.jpg 253w, https:\/\/news.flinders.edu.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Fig-1-Moire-experiments-863x1024.jpg 863w, https:\/\/news.flinders.edu.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/Fig-1-Moire-experiments-768x912.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 872px) 100vw, 872px\" \/>).<br \/>The paper, \u2018<a href=\"https:\/\/onlinelibrary.wiley.com\/doi\/10.1002\/sstr.202500776\">Topological Polar Textures in van der Waals Moir\u00e9 Superlattices<\/a>\u2019 (2026) by Josh Edwards, Daniel Bennett, Michael S Fuhrer, Mark T Edmonds, and Pankaj Sharma, has been published in <em>Small Structures <\/em>(Wiley), DOI: 10.1002\/sstr.202500776.<br \/><strong>Funding: <\/strong>The authors acknowledge the financial support from the Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Grant Program (DP240102137 and DP200101345). DB acknowledges support from the NTU Startup Grant (Award Number 025661-00003).<br \/>&nbsp;<br \/>                         <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/news.flinders.edu.au\/wp-content\/themes\/flinders_s\/images\/flinderuni_main_logo_black.png\" alt=\"Flinders University Logo\" \/>                     <br \/>Sturt Rd, Bedford Park <br \/>                         South Australia 5042<br \/>South Australia | Northern Territory<br \/>                         Global | Online<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.flinders.edu.au\/website-feedback\" title=\"Website feedback\">Website feedback<\/a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a title=\"Copyright and disclaimer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flinders.edu.au\/copyright-disclaimer\">Disclaimer<\/a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.flinders.edu.au\/accessibility\" title=\"Accessibility\">Accessibility<\/a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a title=\"Privacy\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flinders.edu.au\/privacy\">Privacy<\/a><br \/>                             CRICOS Provider: 00114A&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/rss\/articles\/CBMiiwFBVV95cUxNQ3ctY0N6UlFDa1g0Y1RYUkdxTG04QmtSZXI0bHZ5b1dMLV9aeVlEUXpLQWxvc0l0X3JzUzBxSGxUTDBXcEk4V0hMOTFuUHZrbkhaUENEaTlRV1BDdGxnb2gwVHBBWDFoVEhydVVIeE11WWF0UUVlYzF1VENGaTFDVWVaX2JIQVAwV2Rn?oc=5\">source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>select a category Archives Search News Just as swirly, wave-like patterns can appear on computer screen when pixels do not align, new research led by Flinders University is investigating atomic-scale \u2018moir\u00e9 patterns\u2019 in the promising field of ferroelectricity.The new study, with experts at Monash University and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, seeks inroads into electrical [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11391,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-11390","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}