Paul of EPFL Swizerland

At first sight piezoelectricity looks like a simple effect of some special dielectric, 
crystalline materials described by a linear law between mechanical strain and an applied 
electric field. The opposite works as well, i.e. one can generate charges through 
mechanical deformation or force. This versatility has led to a plethora of applications, but 
also to a certain complexity as the physics of the application must be considered in terms 
of the piezoelectric, mechanical and dielectric properties of the piezoelectric material. 
Research in thin films for MEMS showed new effects related to the higher applied fields, 
and to the importance of interfaces. Non-linear behavior is observed, and semiconductor 
properties may shine up at the interfaces. The talk aims at describing some specific 
features of piezoelectric for various applications (as, e.g. RF filters in mobile phones), 
including more recent ones in photonics and microelectronics. 

Biography:

Paul Muralt received a diploma in experimental physics in 1978 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH in Zurich. He accomplished his Ph.D. thesis in the field of commensurate-incommensurate phase transitions at the Solid State Laboratory of ETH. In the years 1984 and 1985 he held a post doctoral position at the IBM Research Laboratory in Zurich where he pioneered the application of scanning tunneling microscopy to surface potential imaging. In 1987, after a stay at the Free University of Berlin, he joined the Balzers group in Liechtenstein. He specialized in sputter deposition techniques, and managed since 1991 a department for development and applications of Physical Vapor Deposition and PECVD processes. In 1993, he joined the Ceramics Laboratory of EPFL in Lausanne. AS group leader for thin films and MEMS devices, he specialized in piezoelectric and pyroelectric MEMS with mostly Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 and AlN thin film. His research interests are in thin film growth in general, and more specifically in property assessment of small ferroelectric structures, in integration issues of ferroelectric and other polar materials, property-microstructure relationships, and applications of polar materials in semiconductor and micro-electro-mechanical devices. More recently he extended his interests to oxide thin films of ionic conductors. The focus in piezoelectric thin films was directed towards AlN-ScN alloys. He gives lectures in thin film processing, micro fabrication, and surface analysis. He authored or co-authored more than 230 scientific articles. He became Fellow of IEEE in 2013. In 2005, he received an outstanding achievement award at the International Symposium on Integrated Ferroelectrics (ISIF), and in 2016 the B.C. Sawyer Memorial award. Chairman of the International Workshops on Piezoelectric MEMS(http://www.piezomems2011.org/)

Email:

Address:EPFL STI-DO MXF 210 (Bâtiment MXF) Station 12 , 1015 Lausanne, Lausanne, Switzerland, 1015