The study of ferroic properties is carried out by an international team of scientists, including specialists from Vitebsk.

As part of the European Union's science and innovation support program "Horizon 2020", scientists from six countries — Portugal, Germany, Lithuania, Great Britain, Ukraine, and Belarus — are implementing the TUMOCS project.

The Belarusian side is represented by researchers from the Institute of Solid State and Semiconductor Physics and the Institute of Technical Acoustics of the National Academy of Sciences, which recently organized the international seminar "Metastable Perovskite Multiferroics" in Vitebsk.

— Multiferroics are a special class of materials, primarily ceramics; studying their specific properties and further development require the consolidation of specialists, access to the practical skills of scientists, and to Europe's advanced equipment. TUMOCS has been fulfilling these tasks for a year now, — explained the Director of the Institute of Technical Acoustics, Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, Doctor of Technical Sciences Vasily Rubanik. — If good results are achieved, there is a prospect of using new materials in industry. It is important for us that the project has become a platform for internships for both young and seasoned scientists. In 2016 alone, five Vitebsk researchers — postgraduate students, candidates of sciences, professors — worked on the project at the renowned University of Aveiro (Portugal). Last year, trips were made to Vilnius University, and internships in Germany and England are planned for the future. Such an exchange allows us to work fruitfully with foreign colleagues on various topics, not only within this project, and also to publish in top-tier global scientific journals.

During the working meeting, the initiator and coordinator of the project, invited researcher from the University of Aveiro Andrei Salak (by the way, our countryman, formerly an associate professor and deputy dean of the Faculty of Physics at VSU), said that Aveiro is a major center for ceramics production, and the university has actively engaged in studying the various physical properties of this material. The main goals of the project are to combine two areas — academic and applied science, and to exchange innovations and personnel — implementing the RISE (Research and Innovation Staff Exchange) program, with the main part of the TUMOCS budget serving this purpose.

— In science, there are repeated discoveries. For example, in the 1970s in the USSR, substances combining polar and magnetic properties were discovered. Recently, such materials have been considered in a broader physical sense and are called multiferroics (from ferrum - iron, although iron as an element may not be present in these materials — editor's note). The idea of the TUMOCS project is to conduct new research based on recent publications and developments with the efforts of several teams, and to achieve a greater effect in the use of materials, — said Andrey Nikolaevich. — The created material can be a universal sensor, a detector capable of capturing the slightest changes in magnetic field, pressure, and temperature fluctuations with low energy consumption. For example, multiferroics can be used in airports in this way, making control more reliable, simpler, and cheaper. They are also applicable in other industries. The world can be safer. And we emphasized this when creating the project.

According to Professor Jurase Banys of Vilnius University, the research of Lithuanian scientists conducted within this European project can be used in electronics, mobile communications, medicine, and other fields that require materials with frequency-dependent properties.

— The team of Vitebsk scientists is of interest to the scientific community for their developments in the field of ultrasonic technologies, which allow activating new properties, including in the material under study, — clarified Vasily Rubanik and noted: — In Vitebsk, the project participants summed up the results of the first year, exchanged information on research and plans for the future. TUMOCS provides an opportunity for interdisciplinary scientific groups to continue their work for another three years.

Nataliya KRUPITSA, "Vitbichi".