Strontium titanate promising for new generation of sensors

Project Engineer Bulat Gabbasov is among the winners of grant funding from the Russian Science Foundation’s program for young scientists.

His project ‘Investigation of impurity- or morphology-induced modification of the macroscopic properties of strontium titanate monocrystals and the potential for their use in strain gauges’ is going to receive 1.5 million rubles from the organization.

“In the process of work on my PhD thesis ‘Structure and properties of impurity centers of S-ions in SrTiO3 and SrY2O4 crystals according to EPR spectroscopy’, which I defended in February of this year, the effect of lowering the symmetry in thin plates of strontium titanate was discovered. This can be used with much practical effect in deformation sensors and acoustics,” explains Gabbasov.

The young physicist plans to establish the nature of the phenomenon of symmetry reduction observed by him in thin plates of strontium titanate, to expand the range of oxide single crystals, which are inherent in the effect found in strontium titanate, and also to evaluate the prospects for its practical application.

“We are interested in studying the mechanisms and possibilities of fine tuning the physical properties of oxide single crystals with a cubic structure due to their morphology (shape, orientation, size, and surface quality) and doping, and also to find out the possibilities of using strontium titanate as a basis for strain detectors,” he continues.

A device will be constructed to research the influence of deformations of the dielectric properties of strontium titanate monocrystals.