Materials Science Research
The Physics Department at RMC pursues research in the field of Material Sciences.
Research in this field is very broad as various materials are investigated by using different established techniques. Research in Material Sciences at RMC pertains both to theoretical and applied physics.
Here are the various topics being studied at RMC and the researchers involved in the field of Material Sciences.
Laboratory for Ferroelectric and Optical Materials
The Laboratory of Ferroelectric and Optical Materials carries out research on the characterisation of ferroelectric and optical materials (ceramics, polymers, composites and single crystals) to improve our understanding of their behaviour and to help in designing better transducer applications (sensors and actuators). Experiments have been put in place to find the piezoelectric, dielectric and elastic, electro-optic and other material coefficients. These materials exhibit significant non-linear behaviour and, in order to study and understand this behaviour, experiments have been set up to determine the material's response as a function of time, frequency, temperature, applied field and pre-stress.
More information, see: Laboratory for Ferroelectric and Optical Materials
Mossbauer Effect Spectroscopy (MES)
MES has been applied recently to study:
- The hydrogenation of rare earth intermetallic compounds
- Materials produced by the Molecular Beam Epitaxy technique
- Lake sediments
MES is currently applied to study:
- The anisotropy in magnetic hyperfine field at iron nuclei in single crystalline intermetallic compounds
Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE)
(Dr T. Krause )
R&D in NDE includes laboratory experimentation and computer modeling in the area of:
- Eddy current testing
- Multi-frequency eddy current testing
- Pulsed eddy current
- Remote field eddy current
- Probability of detection
- Ultrasonic testing
Optical properties of polymers and applications to surface relief gratings
(Drs P.L. Rochon and L. Levesque ).
The optical generation of surface gratings on azopolymer thin films allows us to be active in the following research fields:
- Wave propagation in periodically corrugated waveguides to generate photonic band gap structures.
- Standing wave surface plasmon mediated scattering studies by a doubly corrugated surface grating.
- Development of sensor structures by precise control of the surface grating properties.
- Numerical computation of diffraction efficiency in grating structures
- Studies on the fundamental properties of image inscription in azopolymer films
