University of Liege and University of Geneva scientists have developed a new artificial material based on interface engineering at the atomic scale that promises to open up radically new electronic applications.

The material is a superlattice, with a multilayer structure composed of alternating atomically thin layers of two different oxides (PbTiO3 and SrTiO3). It has properties that are different from either of the two materials–ferroelectricity and a dielectric constant–created by the artificially layered structure and driven by interactions at the atomic scale at the interfaces between the layers.