Ramamoorthy Ramesh

Technological evolution and revolution are both driven by the discovery of new functionalities, new materials and the design of yet smaller, faster, and more energy-efficient components. Progress is being made at a breathtaking pace, stimulated by the rapidly growing demand for more powerful and readily available information technology. High-speed internet and data-streaming, home automation, tablets and smartphones are now "necessities" for our everyday lives. Consumer expectations for progressively more data storage and exchange appear to be insatiable. Oxide electronics is a promising and relatively new field that has the potential to trigger major advances in information technology. Oxide interfaces are particularly intriguing. Here, low local symmetry combined with an increased susceptibility to external fields leads to unusual physical properties distinct from those of the homogeneous bulk. In this context, ferroic domain walls have attracted recent attention as a completely new type of oxide interface. In addition to their functional properties, such walls are spatially mobile and can be created, moved, and erased on demand. This unique degree of flexibility enables domain walls to take an active role in future devices and hold a great potential as multifunctional 2D systems for nanoelectronics. With domain walls as reconfigurable electronic 2D components, a new generation of adaptive nano-technology and flexible circuitry becomes possible, that can be altered and upgraded throughout the lifetime of the device. Thus, what started out as fundamental research, at the limit of accessibility, is finally maturing into a promising concept for next-generation technology.

The aim of this book is to present in one volume some of the most significant developments that have taken place in the field of integrated ferroelectrics during the last decade of the twentieth century. The book begins with a comprehensive introduction to integrated ferroelectrics and follows with fifty-three papers selected by Carlos Paz de Araujo, Orlando Auciello, Ramamoorthy Ramesh, and George W. Taylor. These fifty-three papers were selected from more than one thousand papers published over the last eleven years in the proceedings of the International Symposia on Integrated Ferroelectrics (ISIF). These papers were chosen on the basis that they (a) give a broad view of the advances that have been made and (b) indicate the future direction of research and technological development. Readers who wish for a more in-depth treatment of the subject are encouraged to refer to volumes 1 to 27 of Integrated Ferroelectrics, the main publication vehicle for papers in this field.