9 January 2001 Title and Authors Conductivity is Skin Deep Orga Card Systems High-tech cards. New measurements show that their surfaces can conduct electricity, even though the bulk material cannot.
Ferroelectric materials can create an electric field the way iron magnets create a magnetic field.
And because they're so easily miniaturized, ferroelectrics are being used to permanently store data in a new generation of so-called smart cards, used for financial transactions in some countries. But condensed matter physicists still don't fully understand how these promising materials work. Now a Japanese team reports in the 8 January PRL that they have finally verified this surprising prediction. But not all experts are convinced. Researchers want to use ferroelectrics for data storage, but the materials have other properties that make them ideal for steering microscopic motions in ink jet printers and for detecting infrared light at room temperature.