ferroelectric
jeure | July 10, 2012One of physics’ greatest tricks is polarization. Take magnets, for example, such as those commonly found on refrigerators holding up shopping lists and Christmas cards. These have the familiar north/south polarization that we can experience as attraction and repulsion. That magnetic orientation persists all the way down to the individual molecules, which actually align to cause the larger-scale behavior.
This polar phenomenon is caused by ferromagnetism, a defining quality of some particles that gives them an intrinsic polarity – what scientists call a dipole moment. And remarkably, that…