Sidney B. Lang & Helen L.W. Chan 
Frontiers of Ferroelectricity 
A Special Issue of the Journal of Materials Science

The ?eld of ferroelectricity is a very active one. Many hundreds of papers in this ?eld are published each year and a large number of local and international conferences are held. We felt that it wouldbeappropriate at this time to publish a set of papers in a single journal describing some of the most active areas in the ?eld. The Journal of Materials Science agreed to publish a special issue on ferroelectricity. Accordingly, we sent requests for papers to a number of research groups around the world. It was diff?culttoselect a small number of groups from among the many excellent ones in the ?eld and we apologize to those not included. We received 24 manuscripts from groups in North America, Asia and Europe, each one of which was reviewed by two referees. The papers include reviews and current research, both experimental and theoretical. It was especially satisfying that the authors included not only established researchers but also manyyounger people who are destined to continue in the ?eld in the future. The special issue entitled “Frontiers of Ferroelectricity”appeared as Volume 41, Issue 1 of the Journal of Materials Science in January 2006. Because webelieved that many researchers and students would ?nd great value in having the complete set of papers on their bookshelf, we suggested to the editors of Springer that Frontiers of Ferroelectricity shouldbe published in book form.

Table of Content

Self-assembled nanoscale ferroelectrics.- Factors influencing the piezoelectric behaviour of PZT and other “morphotropic phase boundary” ferroelectrics.- Polar nanoclusters in relaxors.- Recent progress in relaxor ferroelectrics with perovskite structure.- Flexoelectric effects: Charge separation in insulating solids subjected to elastic strain gradients.- Piezoelectric anisotropy: Enhanced piezoelectric response along nonpolar directions in perovskite crystals.- Voltage tunable epitaxial Pbx Sr(1?x)Ti O3 films on sapphire by MOCVD: Nanostructure and microwave properties.- Studies on the relaxor behavior of sol-gel derived Ba(Zrx Ti1?x )O3 (0.30?x?0.70) thin films.- Magnetoelectric coupling, efficiency, and voltage gain effect in piezoelectric-piezomagnetic laminate composites.- Piezoresponse force microscopy and recent advances in nanoscale studies of ferroelectrics.- Dielectric response of polymer relaxors.- The relaxor enigma — charge disorder and random fields in ferroelectrics.- Properties of ferroelectric ultrathin films from first principles.- Fredholm integral equation of the Laser Intensity Modulation Method (LIMM): Solution with the polynomial regularization and L-curve methods.- Multilayer piezoelectric ceramic transformer with low temperature sintering.- A Monte Carlo simulation on domain pattern and ferroelectric behaviors of relaxor ferroelectrics.- Solid freeform fabrication of piezoelectric sensors and actuators.- Kinetics of ferroelectric domains: Application of general approach to Li Nb O3 and Li Ta O3.- Ferroelectric transducer arrays for transdermal insulin delivery.- Loss mechanisms and high power piezoelectrics.- Effect of electrical conductivity on poling and the dielectric, pyroelectric and piezoelectric properties of ferroelectric 0–3composites.- Properties of triglycine sulfate/poly(vinylidene fluoride-trifluoroethylene) 0–3 composites.- Near-field acoustic and piezoresponse microscopy of domain structures in ferroelectric material.- Normal ferroelectric to ferroelectric relaxor conversion in fluorinated polymers and the relaxor dynamics.