2018 IEEE-ISAF Conference in Hiroshima
This year, the IEEE International Symposium on the Applications of Ferroelectrics (ISAF) was held at the International Conference Center at Hiroshima, Japan, from May 27th to June 1st, 2018, as a Joint meeting with the FMA (Meeting on Ferroelectric Materials and their Applications), the Piezoresponse Force Microscopy (PFM) Workshop, and two Asian Meetings on Ferroelectricity and Electroceramics (AMF and AMEC, respectively). The Joint Conference, named IFAAP 2018 (ISAF-FMA-AMF-AMEC-PFM), was the first joint conference between IEEE-ISAF, AMF and AMEC. The IFAAP General Chair was Prof. Takaaki Tsurumi (Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan) and the ISAF Chair was Prof. Ronald G. Polcawich (Army Research Laboratory, USA). Prof. Norifumi Fujimura (Osaka Prefecture University, Japan) served as FMA Chair, Prof. Yongxiang Li (Shanghai Institute of Ceramics, China) as AMF Chair, Prof. Hong Wang (Southern University of Science and Technology & Xi’an Jiaotong University, China) as AMEC Chair, and Prof. Alexei Gruverman (University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA) as PFM Chair.
IFAAP 2018 brought together many of the world’s most prominent researchers from academia, national laboratories and industries, in order to discuss the most recent advancements in the science and technology of ferroelectric and dielectric materials.
In total, 1001 participants were registered to IFAAP 2018 and presented their work during the numerous technical sessions. The Conference had very strong Asian participation, led by Japan with 276 attendees, followed closely by China with 259 participants. 89 delegates were present from Thailand, 74 from South Korea and 32 from Taiwan. The USA was the leading western country with 77 participants, followed by Germany with 40. UK and France contributed with 25 and 22 attendees, respectively.
Technical Program of IFAAP 2018:
Talks were arranged in ten different sessions, and three poster sessions were presented (on May 28th, 29th and 30th). A total of 529 talks (including 177 invited talks) and 375 posters were presented at the IFAAP Conference.
Every morning the sessions were opened by Plenary lectures delivered by prominent scientists who provided the audience with cutting-edge research and insightful views into the present and future trends in research in ferroelectric materials and the related characterization techniques:
- On Monday, May 28th, Prof. Jürgen Rödel (Technische Universität Darmstadt, Germany) reported on the status of research on lead-free piezoceramics, and introduced the materials that have best prospects to be used for specific applications. Following his talk, Prof. Patrycja Paruch (University of Geneva, Switzerland) explained how PFM can be used to address the fundamental questions about ferroelectric domain boundaries.
- On Tuesday, May 29th, Dr. Takashi Eshita (Fujitsu Semiconductor Ltd., Japan) reported on the development of highly reliable ferroelectric random access memories (FRAM) that can also be used in Internet of Things (IoT) applications.
- On Wednesday, May 30th, Prof. Chan-Ho Yang (KAIST, Korea) explained the concept of lattice defectronics and their implications on ferroelectric properties from the point of view of advanced PFM-based characterization techniques.
- On Thursday, May 31st, Prof. Yanfeng Chen (Nanjing University, China) explained how microstructure can be engineered in ferroelectrics to achieve specific acoustic properties.
The Conference was concluded by a Plenary lecture by Prof. Jacob L. Jones (North Carolina State University, USA) who delivered an inspiring talk about how diffraction and scattering methods can be used to understand the structure of ferroelectric materials down to the atomic scale.
[caption id="attachment_6044" align="aligncenter" width="584"]
Prof. Tsurumi delivers the Opening Speech of the IFAAP 2018 Conference.[/caption] [caption id="attachment_6045" align="aligncenter" width="587"]
Prof. J. L. Jones during the closing Plenary Talk.[/caption] [caption id="attachment_6046" align="aligncenter" width="578"]
Main lecture hall at the International Conference Center during IFAAP 2018.[/caption] [caption id="attachment_6047" align="aligncenter" width="582"]
The Poster Session.[/caption]
The IFAAP 2018 Conference covered many topics ranging from bulk and thin film ferroelectric, relaxor, multiferroic and dielectric materials to the many different types of techniques available to characterize materials on several length scales (from electron microscopy to spectroscopy to diffraction and scattering of x-rays and neutrons). Many sessions were devoted to applications: in particular in the field of energy harvesting, energy storage, MEMS, microwave devices, memristors, etc. Of particular note were the numerous sessions dedicated to HfO2, an emerging CMOS-compatible ferroelectric material with enormous application potential in MEMS, capacitors and ferroelectric RAMs. More than 20 talks spread over two days explored several aspects of research in HfO2: material stability, electrical properties, materials science issues, characterization, devices and the negative capacitance effects. A very interesting feature of IFAAP 2018 was the sessions (on Tuesday, May 29th) dedicated to R&D activities on ferroelectrics in Japanese companies. During these sessions, lead companies (Fujitsu Semiconductor, Murata Manufacturing, TDK, Rohm, RICOH, Mitsubishi Materials, Taiyo Yuden, Shoei Chemical, Kyocera, NGK Spark Plug) presented insightful talks on the state-of-the-art research about ferroelectrics in Japan and about their marketed products.
More information on the meeting can be found in the news related to:
The reports on IFAAP 2018 were authored by Dr. Marco Deluca (Materials Center Leoben Forschung GmbH, Austria). Dr. Takuya Hoshina (Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan), Prof. Michelle Dolgos (Oregon State University, USA), and Mr. Vignaswaran K. Veerapandiyan (Materials Center Leoben Forschung GmbH, Austria) contributed to this report.