Toward ferroelectric surfaces

Ferroelec. materials have promising applications in frequency control and filtering (e.g. Miniaturization in cellular phone technol.). One approach to such materials is to use a textured insulator surface with a trigonal array of channels. When mols. with rotatable elec. dipoles are partially inserted into such a matrix, with the rotors protruding outside, an array of elec. dipoles on a surface of the crystal is formed. The preferred alignment of the rotors in the array is detd. by the location of the channels in the porous material. Trigonal arrangment may lead to a ferroelec. ground states. We describe our progress in the design, fabrication, and characterization of such surface inclusion compds. using mainly solid-state NMR techniques and dielec. spectroscopy