The Laboratory of Ceramics of the EPFL

The Laboratory of Ceramics (LC) of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) is one of the leading academic laboratories in Europe in the field of polar ceramics. The laboratory counts 35-40 collaborators mostly senior scientists, postdoctoral fellows and doctorants. An important part of the research activity is concerned with novel electroceramic thin and thick films and their integration into microdevices. The expertise in the lab covers a wide spectrum of topics, from theory of ferroelectrics (with extensive experience in theory of ferroelectrics at high frequencies), through novel processing methods and electrical characterization (including expertise in characterization of ferroelectrics at microwaves) to device design, modeling, fabrication and testing. The laboratory has extensive facilities for the production, characterisation, and testing of functional ceramics, thin films, and devices based on these materials. LC collaborates with numerous industries and academic laboratories throughout the world, in particularly in Europe. During the last 10 years this research work resulted in hundreds of scientific publications, a number of patents, many new products, and one start-up company.

Nava Setter received Ph.D. degree in Solid State Science from the Pennsylvania State University in 1980. She has worked in the area of ferroelectric ceramics and single crystals, microwave dielectric and ferrites at the Pennsylvania State University, USA, at the University of Geneva, Switzerland, and R&D laboratories in Israel. Since 1989 she is the director of the Ceramics Laboratory of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne (EPFL), and a professor in Materials Science and Engineering at the EPFL-Swiss Federal Institute of Technology. Her scientific interests are in ferroelectrics and related materials in form of ceramic thin and thick films for sensors, actuators, and microelectronic components.

Alexander K. Tagantsev obtained his PhD in Physics in the Ioffe Physico-Technical Institute, St. Petersburg, Russia (1982) where he worked as a scientist and he later became professor and the head of a laboratory (1991-1993). In 1993 he joint the Laboratory of Ceramics of EPFL where he is the head of the ‘Modeling and theory’ section. His domains of experience and expertise are microwave materials, ferroelectricity, phonon physics, and electrodynamics of superconductors. He is the author of principle results on the theory of intrinsic dielectric loss in crystals.