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Andrew Bell

What Have Ferroelectrics Ever Done for Us?*
* With apologies to Monty Python:

Ferroelectric materials are at the heart of an exceptionally wide range of electrotechnical devices, across multiple market sectors. The scope of applications encompasses the ubiquity of capacitors and PIR sensors, through to the relative obscurity of, say, helicopter icing. detection. This diversity is due not only to the polarization’s sensitivity to multiple external variables, but also to its coupling to other material characteristics such as lattice strain, refractive index and magnetization, resulting in piezoelectric, electro-optic and magnetoelectric effects. A further characteristic that promotes exploitation is the variety of material forms through which ferroelectrics can deliver their properties, including single crystals, bulk ceramics, thick films/multilayers, thin films, polymers and composites. This tutorial-style presentation will attempt to review exemplars of the most significant, interesting and entertaining applications of ferroelectric materials. Although a historically biased perspective is inevitable, the approach will be multi-faceted and will also feature new and emerging technologies. The talk will address device mechanisms, material figures of merit, relevant process technology, relative market size and how each application ranks on an arbitrary “cool” scale.
Presenter Bio

Andrew Bell joined the University of Leeds as Professor of Electronic Materials in March 2000. He had previously held research posts in UK industry with the Plessey Company, Cookson Group and Oxley Developments and had been a Senior Scientist in the Ceramics Laboratory of EPFL, Switzerland from 1991-95. His research, resulting in over 160 publications, has covered a wide range of ferroelectric materials and devices including pyroelectrics, PTC resistors, multilayer capacitors and piezoelectrics for sonar and ultrasound applications. He is a founder and Chief Scientific Advisor of Ionix Advanced Technologies Ltd, a company formed to exploit his group’s work on high temperature piezoelectric materials. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and the IoM3 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2016. He received the IEEE-UFFC Ferroelectrics Recognition Award in 2012, the IoM3 Verulam Medal in 2014 and the Japanese Ferroelectrics International Award in 2015.

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