Author(s): BAFFA, O.; COSTA-FILHO, A.; CRESTANA, S.; OLIVA, G.; ONUCHIC, J. N.; REZENDE, S. M.

Summary: Sergio Mascarenhas was born in Rio de Janeiro on May 2, 1928, and sadly passed away on May 31, 2021, at the age of 93, after a prolifc life dedicated to developing science and technology in Brazil. Sergio Mascarenhas is one of the founding fathers of condensed matter physics in Brazil. He was a student of the Joaquim da Costa Ribeiro at Universidade do Brasil in Rio de Janeiro. He published his frst papers working on the thermodieletric efect, discovered by Costa Ribeiro. Mascarenhas was the one who called the new phenomenon the Costa Ribeiro efect. He took the frst steps in his academic career in 1955 by moving from Rio de Janeiro, at the time, the country’s capital and principal city, to a small city in the inland of the state of Sao Paulo, São Carlos, when the University of Sao Paulo was expanding its activities beyond the city of Sao Paulo. At that time, Sao Carlos was the host of a promising engineering school. Sergio was hired at the Physics Department and from the very beginning was doing research in condensed matter. This was of-stream at that moment, when the most prestigious areas of physics research were nuclear, high energy, and theoretical physics, and solid-state physics was considered as a second-class research area. He followed the steps of Joaquim da Costa Ribeiro, his mentor in Rio de Janeiro, working in the same class of problems. Of course, this was what was possible to do with the limited experimental resources available. Nevertheless, Mascarenhas published, as a sole author, an important paper in 1970 (S. Mascarenhas (1970) Charge and polarization storage n solids, Radiation Efects: Incorporating Plasma Science and Plasma Technology, 4:2, 263–270, https://doi.org/10.1080/00337577008242012), which summarizes the research he had done. In the paper, he reported on the study of the Costa Ribeiro efect (charge storage during phase changes), photo and thermo electrets (charge and polarization storage due to dipoles, space charge, or electronic efects associated with trapping), and ferroelectricity (in this case only related to ice). Thus, one can appreciate the breadth of studies he pursued and the vast network of collaborators he developed in his career. This is an important point to underline. Sergio always thought of research as a collaborative enterprise and loved sharing ideas and working with research teams.

Publication year: 2022

Types of publication: Journal article

Unit: Embrapa Instrumentation

Keywords: Science and technology in Brazil, Thermodieletric effect