Tomaž Kos was awarded with the PCT technology network award (Process Control Technology) for the Master’s thesis entitled “Measurement system for automated low-frequency and high-temperature characterization of dielectric materials”. The underlying work has been performed under the mentorship of Assoc. Prof. Dr. Gregor Klančar and co-mentorship of Asst. Prof. Dr. Tadej Rojac, and defended at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at University of Ljubljana.

The award ceremony was held on April 6, 2017 at AIG’17 conference.

Abstract:

As sensors, actuators and interconverters of mechanical signals into electrical quantities, piezoelectric materials are used in a wide range of industrial and laboratory settings. Currently, some of the most widely used piezoelectric materials are those with high piezoelectric responses, but their usefulness only extends over a relatively small temperature range, as at temperatures as low as ~ 200°C such materials depole or lose their piezoelectric activity. Recently, various industrial sectors have expressed the need for the use of piezoelectric devices in high temperature environments (> 200°C), where the piezoelectric materials are also required to have a high piezoelectric response. For the development of such piezoelectric materials insight into their dynamic electrical properties is required. For this purpose a measurement system was developed that enables an automated high-temperature and low-frequency characterization of dielectric materials in the frequency range between 2 mHz and 1 kHz and in the temperature range from room temperature and 450 °C.