Welcome

   The 6th International Workshop on Relaxor Ferroelectrics (IWRF-2018) will be held on July 17-21, 2018 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. On behalf of the Organizing Committee and the International Advisory Committee, I am pleased to welcome you to this exciting event.
   IWRF-2018 is a part of a series of international conferences on the named theme. As a recent and successful series in the ferroic materials community, the IWRFs are devoted to in-depth discussions on basic and applied aspects of phenomena originating from chemical order/disorder, structural inhomogeneities in condensed matters which could results in extraordinary properties useful for a wide range of future technological applications such as Internet of Things. The previous five events of IWRFs were held in Xi'an, China (2011), Schloss Edesheim, Germany (2012), St. Petersburg, Russia (2013), Prague, Czech Republic (2014), Matsue, Japan (2016), respectively.
   Relaxor ferroelectrics form an important class of functional materials, that includes the piezoelectrics (which convert mechanical energy into electrical energy, and vice versa), ferroelectrics (with switchable remnant polarization) and magnetoelectrics (with interacting polarization and magnetization). These materials are useful in a vast range of industrial and commercial applications in energy storage, environmental sensing and heath monitoring, e.g. as nonvolatile random-access memory devices in future computers, ‘smart’ sensors and actuators for active control of vibration or noise, high-resolution ultrasonic probes for more accurate medical imaging, diagnosing and treatment, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS), and electromechanical transducers for bio-sensing or energy harvesting. Central to relaxor ferroelectrics materials are chemical order/disorder and structural inhomogeneities on micro- to nano-scopic scale, which play a crucial role in the development of the macroscopic properties of this class of functional materials. However, the complex structures and microscopic mechanisms of the intricate relaxor ferroelectrics are still poorly understood.
   IWRF-2018 is aimed to provide a forum to present and discuss the state-of-the-art developments in relaxor ferroelectrics and related materials, with emphasis on the analysis, theory and modeling, and interpretations of the relaxor ferroelectricity and related phenomena, in order to provide a better understanding of the relationship between the nano-structures and macroscopic properties of relaxors, and to design and synthesize novel relaxor ferroelectric materials of high-performance for technological applications.
   A wide range of topics will be covered. We welcome a wide spectrum of researchers in this area who are coming and sharing your most recent work. We are convinced that your participation will enhance the technical profile and stimulate the discussion in this fascinating research area.
   As an award-winning city, Vancouver is consistently ranked one of the top most-livable cities in the world. There is much to do in Vancouver and in the beautiful province of British Columbia, before and/or after the conference. See the Accommodations section to reserve your room at our beautiful venue and see the Tourism to help you plan your trip beyond IWRF-2018!
   We would like to acknowledge our sponsors for their generous support of our conference. They have allowed us to offer you an exciting and rewarding program.
   All of the members of the Organizing Committee of IWRF-2018 from Simon Fraser University have been working hard preparing for this conference to make it the best possible. We are excited about the outcome and we wish you a superb conference experience and a memorable stay in Vancouver!

Sincerely,

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