We investigated the polarization enhancement in 60-nm-thick vinylidene fluoride/trifluoroethylene (VDF/TrFE) films without thermal annealing by applying repeated bipolar electric pulses. The remnant polarization was 8.4 mC/m2 in as-spin-coated films and increased to up to 45 mC/m2 when 105 pulses were applied. Although the remnant polarization was half and the coercive field twice those of annealed films, the electrically treated film had a markedly smoother surface than the annealed film. Finally, a 15-nm-thick ferroelectric VDF/TrFE film with low conductivity was fabricated by electric treatment; annealed films with the same thickness experienced a severe short-circuit problem originating from the surface roughness.

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The linewidth of the ferromagnetic resonance absorption in nickel, iron and cobalt was measured in pulsed magnetic fields up to 35 T at frequencies between 400 and 900 GHz. With this configuration we were able to determine the intrinsic relaxation in the temperature range between 10 and 300 K. Our results show that there is a universal behaviour of the relaxation for the 3d ferromagnets.

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Extended abstract of a paper presented at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2011 in Nashville, Tennessee, USA, August 7–August 11, 2011.