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The PiezoInstitute: European Expertise Centre for
Multifunctional and
Integrated Piezoelectric Devices (PI)
Supporting Action of 7FP (FP7-NMP-2011-CSA-5/290591)
(Proposal submitted in February 2011. Selected as elegible for funding in May 2011.
Negotiations with EC accomplished November 2011. Duration: 36 months)
The Piezoinstitute AISBL (PI) emerged from the EC Network of
Excellence MIND (Multifunctional & Integrated Piezoelectric Devices).
PI is well a functioning non profit organisation with ongoing activities dedicated to support the integration
of the fragmented European expertise and deliver innovative educational tools through postgraduate degrees
combining materials, technology and device knowledge. It needs, however, to continue strengthening its
visibility through increasing dissemination and building out all the existing activities within education,
research and training.
The new knowledge under development within PI supports the environmental, safety
and health policies of EU and is designed to facilitate next generation of material technologies for
autonomous monitoring systems incl. Energy Harvesters. To achieve further defragmentation, PI will
increase the shared research support activities incl. the preparation of proposals, active participation
in programming activities for future calls, further developing of European postgraduate degrees, offering
of expertise and support of innovation within the field to European industry and in particular to SMEs.
To increase its visibility and support dissemination to public and professionals, PI will organise
conferences, workshops, tutorials and industrial courses. PI plans to widen the offer of industrial
training, based on accredited courses within technology and modelling. Thanks to complementary expertise
of its members, and history of extensive collaboration, PI has developed substantial expertise within
lead-free piezoelectric materials, their processing and technology, the knowledge of which combined with
the design expertise, PI will exploit to support industrial implementation of, serving the environmentally
friendly innovation. The scientists with PI’s international degree will have a thorough and sound grounding
to support Europe’s environmentally friendly processing, modelling and development of next generation
technologies.
The Piezoinstitute
One of the first activities of Piezoinstitute was the organization of the "Electroceramics for End Users IV
(PIEZO2009)"(1-4 March, 2009. Zakopane, Poland) , within a series of Meetings on the topic that began as a
regular activity of the 5FP Thematic Network “POLECER” (2000-2007). The last edition, PIEZO 2011, took place
in Sestriere (Italy) in March 2011.
The next Edition PIEZO2013 will take place in Hotel du Golf in Les Arcs,
France, from the 17th to the 20th of March 2013.
Network of Excellence “MIND” of the 6FP (CE)
(Multifunctional & Integrated Piezoelectric Devices)
In February
2004 a group of researchers of ICMM (Interdepartamental Group of Functional Ferroelectric Materials, GF2 in MIND NoE) joined up for the proposal to the
European Commision, together with 10 other european laboratories, of the
Network of Excellence on “Multifunctional and
Integrated Piezoelectric Devices (MIND)”. This proposal was
favourably evaluated by the Commission services with the help of
independent experts in September 2004. MIND Network of Excellence and the activities of the ICMM group
took place form March 2005 to February 2010.
The main objective of MIND has been to built up a durable integration of the participant institutions by the creation of
"European Institute of Piezoelectric Materials and Devices" (PIEZOINSTITUTE) .
This took place in May 2008, from which date this institution can work independently of the founding institutions. CSIC became Contributing Associated Member (CAM) of the Piezoinstitute in 2008. The Piezoinstitute is a non-profit organization. The purpose of the Piezoinstitue is the research, the study and the promotion of piezoelectric materials and devices.
Journal articles on the Piezoinstitute in:
Sensors News
Financial Times 2007
Financial Times 2009
NPL News: Piezo brought into the mainstream
"Sociedad Española de Acústica" Journal
Materials World: Piezo promises
New York Times (Global Edition)
ECAS News 02/2010 (pp. 12-13)
Scientific
Interests
Some members
of the group have teaching experience, some have advised Master and Ph.D.
Thesis in Chemistry and Physics and organize national (Reuniones
Nacionales de Electrocerámica) or international events (COST514 Workshop,
10th International Meeting on Ferroelectricity (IMF-10), E-MRS Symposium)
in the field of Electroceramics and Ferroelectrics.
All together
the members of the group master a wide number of experimental techniques
concerning precursor chemistry, ceramics and films processing,
physico-chemical analysis, basic knowledge and functional properties
determination of polycrystalline ferroelectric materials. The group
have direct access to laboratories at ICMM with the following techniques:
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Sol-Gel
Chemistry laboratory (glove box, Schlenk apparatus for vacuum
distillation and synthesis under controlled atmospheres, rotavapor,
viscosimeter). Clean room with spin-coaters and rapid thermal
processor of thin films.
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Planetary
and vibratory mills for mechanochemical activation, wide range of
furnaces (electrical, microwaves, hot-pressing) for synthesis and
ceramic fabrication and tape casting for thick film processing.
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X-ray
reflectivity, X-ray diffractometry and grazing incidence X-ray
diffractometry.
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Profilometry.
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Quantitative
microscopy by computer aided analysis.
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Dynamic
thermomechanical analysis of ceramics.
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Software
developed and impedance analysers devoted to the piezoelectric
characterization of ferroelectric ceramics from resonance
measurements.
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A complete
set of equipment and in-house made software for the measurement of
dielectric, ferroelectric and pyroelectric properties of ferroelectric
thin and thick films and ceramics (impedance analysers, LCR-meter,
RT66A tester, non-volatile function FeRAM tester).
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Ferropiezoelectric
nanocharacterization of materials
Last Update January 2012
Web design A. García and L. Pardo
For suggestions or questions on these pages: Email
Background: coloured image of SEM of the microstructure of a
(Bi0.5Na0.5)TiO3-BaTiO3
ceramic obtained by hot-pressing and recrystallization (A. García, J.L. Millán and L.Pardo.
ICMM-CSIC(ES)-E. Mercadelli and C. Galassi ISTEC-CNR (IT)).
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