Professor Sang-Don Bu's research team in the Department of Physics at our university has recently attracted attention at domestic and international academic conferences for their outstanding research achievements in ferroelectric materials (materials that possess spontaneous polarization without an external electric field).

The research team led by Professor Bu recently won two Best Poster Presentation Awards at the 8th Asian Meeting on Ferroelectrics (AMF), held in Pattaya, Thailand, for papers presented by their graduate students.

First, the team's graduate students Jin-Kyu Han (doctoral student) and Jin-Ho Kwak (master's student), together with Dr. Yong-Chan Choi, identified the importance of very small nanometer-sized crystalline grains in improving the electrical properties of nanostructured ferroelectrics.

They fabricated lead titanate (PbTiO3), a strongly ferroelectric material, in nanotube form and reported unusual phase transition behavior at high temperatures, receiving favorable reviews. If this research is applied to nanostructured nonvolatile memory devices, it is expected to contribute to increased memory density.

In addition, doctoral students Sam-Yeon Jo and Sun-A Yang presented a paper titled "Synthesis and Characterization of Piezoelectric Nanocapsules for the Drug Delivery System" and received an award. The study proposes the feasibility of using piezoelectric capsules as a transport vehicle for drug delivery in the human body. It suggests using the internal void of the nanocapsules to load drugs, transport them, and then trigger release at desired locations via piezoelectricity. Research is underway to secure new technologies.

The award-winning studies will be published in Ferroelectrics, a leading SCI journal in the field of ferroelectrics, and related fabrication techniques are being prepared for patent application.

The Asian Meeting on Ferroelectrics is an international conference held every three years to present and discuss research and applications across the field of ferroelectrics. Hundreds of professors and researchers participated from major Asian countries such as Korea, Japan, and China, as well as from the United States, Russia, Germany, Brazil, and Israel, with over 500 invited, oral, and poster presentations.

Meanwhile, the research team previously won three Excellent Presentation Awards at the Autumn Meeting of the Korean Physical Society, held last October at Phoenix Park in Pyeongchang.