Abstract:
Two events galvanized a large research effort into lead-free piezoceramics about ten years ago:
I. The European Union banned lead except for a set of temporary exemptions
II. The Toyota research group published a Nature paper in 2004, summarizing research over a 6-year period, proving that lead-free piezoceramics are a viable alternative to lead-containing piezoceramics.
In the following years the research output rose from 10 to 400 publications per year with China and Japan leading, Europe accounting for 10 % of the total quantity and the US only showing very select activities. By now, the first products have arrived at the market place. A number of Japanese companies have invested large sums into research and they aim at solid financial return. Some of them produced material reproducibly in 100 kg batches and select areas are known, where lead-free piezoceramics have an advantage to lead-containing piezoceramics.
I will structure the talk in three parts:
I. Motivation, history, markets.
II. Fundamentals, utilizing very recent results from our group on lead-free single crystals, both on BNT-BT as well as on KNN-based materials.
III. Suggestions for applied research with an aim to fast transfer into application.

Bio:
Jürgen Rödel is a Professor in the Department for Materials and Geoscience at Technische Universität Darmstadt (Germany). He obtained a Diplom in Materials Science from Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg and a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley. His current interests include the development of lead-free piezoceramics and the concept of mechanically tuned conductivity. He (co-)authored 270 publications and 4 patents.
He received both the DFG research award for young scientists (Heinz-Maier-Leibnitz-Price) and the DFG research award for senior scientists (Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz-Price). He is member of the German National Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech) and currently serves as vice-president for research at TU Darmstadt.
Rödel教授是达姆施塔特工业大学主管科研的副校长、材料与地球科学系的学科带头人。发表过270篇学术论文，被引用8300次。2009年荣获德国科技最高奖“莱布尼茨奖”（Leibniz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft），2014年当选德国国家科学与工程院院士（Member of German National Academy of Science and Engineering）。