Two best student paper awards for Ishamol Labbaveettil

Awards for her PhD work on KNbO₃ films

She received the first one at the European conference EuroCVD-Baltic ALD (major international conference in the field of chemical vapour deposition), held in Leuven, Belgium, 29 May - 2 June 2023, and the second at the summer school of the French national network ELNANO "Elaboration of nanomaterials for the recovery, conversion, transport and storage of energy", held in Aussois, France, 11-16 June 2023.

Ishamol Labbaveettil is doing her PhD in the PiezoMEMS group (Time & Frequency department) on the growth of KNbO₃ thin films by liquid injection CVD and their characterisation.

KNbO₃ has exceptional piezoelectric and electro-optic properties, but it is not available in the form of large crystals. Thin film growth is also far from routine due to major challenges related to difficulties in controlling the volatile K₂O composition in the films, poor physical properties of the grown films and their irreproducibility. Chemical deposition methods allow easier control of volatile components than physical deposition methods. However, reliable K precursors for CVD are not commercially available.

Ishamol Labbaveetti has demonstrated controlled K composition inKNbO₃ films using advanced metal-organic precursors (synthesised by collaborators at the University of Catania). This enabled the growth of high quality epitaxial KNbO3 films with good ferroelectric properties. This opens up new possibilities for the development of new generation electro-active devices in the fields of micro-acoustics, electro-optics, actuators, sensors, etc.

Contact : Ishamol Labbaveettil