Pavlo Zubko is a PI at the London Centre for Nanotechnology and Professor of Physics at the Department of Physics and Astronomy, UCL. The main focus of his current research is on nanoscale ferroelectricity in thin films and superlattices. His group uses a range of experimental techniques to investigate nanoscale domain structures and their effects on the functional properties of ferroelectrics.

Applications of ferroelectrics in electronics, such as in ferroelectrics random access memories and ferroelectric field effect transistors, usually rely on the stability of ferroelectric polarisation. However, as their dimensions are reduced to the nanoscale, the macroscopic polarisation becomes unstable to domain formation, posing challenges for scaling of memory devices but at the same time presenting new opportunities for engineering functionalities that exploit the unusual domain structures in nanoscale ferroelectrics.

Ferroelectric superlattices consisting of alternating ultrathin layers of ferroelectric and non-ferroelectric oxides offer a model system for investigating such nanoscale domain patterns. I will discuss how the interplay between epitaxial strain and electrostatic boundary conditions in these artificially layered oxides can be used to induce a variety of dense domain structures and engineer materials with enhanced properties and novel functionalities, including large dielectric responses, negative capacitance effects and antiferroelectric-like behaviour [1-4].