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Since the discovery of the phenomenon of ferroelectricity in 1921, it had been only restricted to crystalline materials. An early attempt to describe a microscopic model of glassy ferroelectric was put forward, theoretically, by M. E. Lines, 1977. In this model, it was shown that there is no conceptual difficulty in perceiving the ferroelectric instability in the glassy state. The observation of ferroelectricity in bulky amorphous glassy compounds had not been experimentally realized until 2001 when the research behind this thesis was performed. This Master thesis introduces the first successful attempt to realize the observation of ferroelectricity in an amorphous glassy material, prepared by conventional fast melt quenching technique. This work has a major scientific impact since it has disturbed the existent theory of ferroelectricity. This result is currently highly cited by other researchers who confirmed our observation. Moreover, the observation motivated other researchers to gain deeper insights to the exciting phenomenon.

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Talal M Kamel has BSc in Physics. He finished his MSc in 2001 when he first observed ferroelectricity in glass. He awarded his PhD in 2007 at TU/e in electroceramics. He continued his career as a researcher at IMEC. He is currently focusing on piezoelectric harvesters in ceramic and MEMS structures. He has authored over 30 scientific publications.

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