Researchers observe atomic movements to better understand dielectric materials

The work advances understanding of dielectric materials, which are used in a wide variety of applications from handheld electronics to defibrillators.

“Dielectric materials are insulators that can store and manage electric charge. But we hadn’t yet directly measured how atoms move in dielectric materials in order to store that charge,” said Tedi-Marie Usher, a Ph.D. candidate in materials science and engineering at NC State and lead author of a paper on the work.

The researchers applied voltage to a dielectric material and simultaneously bombarded the material with X-rays from a synchrotron at Argonne National Laboratory’s Advanced Photon Source. When the X-rays hit the material, they scatter into a pattern of bright rings. Typically, to figure out the arrangement of atoms in a material, the positions and intensities of these bright rings are analysed.

NC State said that by applying new mathematical techniques that are more sensitive to the weak (dim) scattered X-rays, the researchers could determine changes in the placement of specific atoms within the crystalline structure of the material.