Ionic Self-Assembled Electric Field Tunable Frequency Adaptive Electronic Materials and Devices

This DARPA SBIR Phase I project will demonstrate the feasibility of revolutionary ionic self-assembly methods of creating electric field-tunable thin-film electronic materials and devices. Exciting recent work at F&S and Virginia Tech has shown that the ionic nature of the self-assembly process inherently results in the spontaneous regular geometric ordering of noncentrosymmetric dipole molecules. Alternating ultra-thin dipole molecules and low-loss polymers in successive monolayers yields a polar ferroelectric thin-film material, with properties determined by both the monolayer constituents on the molecular level. Very recent F&S research results indicate that these thin-films exhibit both piezoelectric and electro-optic behavior. Initial results also indicate that the thin-films exhibit long-term stability, in contrast to poled piezoelectric polymer materials that degrade with time. The self-assembly process additionally allows simplicity of manufacturing, adaptability to two- and three-dimensional patterning and low-cost. F&S has licensed the enabling Virginia Tech patent for self-assembled noncentrosymmetric thin-films, and would work with Virginia Tech and Litton to rapidly transition recent laboratory results to prototype device products.