Giant elastic tunability鈥攖he Young鈥檚 modulus changes reversibly over 30% under applied electric fields鈥攚as discovered in BiFeO3 epitaxial thin films through an atomic force microscopy study utilizing band-excitation piezroresponse spectroscopy.
Multiferroic materials are important because their electrical and magnetic properties are coupled. Because BiFeO3 magnetically orders below 640 K, it is one of two known room-temperature multiferroic materials.
Contradicting theoretical expectations, researchers discovered that increased molecular weight of a polymer significantly reduces the influence of nanoparticles on macroscopic properties of polymer nanocomposite.