What We Are Doing In Our Lab

Courtesy Carnegie Mellon, 2003

A 43m crystal structure

Our Goals:

The goals for our research into photostriction are to develop materials that will show a fast and strong photostrictive response. We hope to determine just what the photoconductivity of our samples are and what happens under different conditions, such as change in wavelength of the light irradiating the sample.

PMN-PT crystal

In The Past:

In the past our lab has done most of its research into the ceramic called PLZT. The majority of this was exploring just how to produce the ceramic from scratch. This research was done with some very excellent help from Kenji Uchino of Penn State and Scientific Materials right here in Bozeman.

Blue laser from AdvR Inc.

In the Future:

Our future goals include continued research into the ceramic PLZT along with research into the crystals PMN-PT doped with Tungsten and PZN-PT. We intend on getting a UV light source for these experiments and the PMN-PT doped with Tungsten crystals are on there way from HC materials.