POTSDAM – The New Horizons in Engineering Distinguished Lectureship Series at Clarkson University will host Penn State University Professor Susan Trolier-McKinstry on Friday, March 6 at 2:30 p.m. in the Multi-Purpose Room of the Student Center.

Trolier-McKinstry will speak on piezoelectric films for microelectromechanical systems.

A reception at 2 p.m. will precede the lecture. The public is cordially invited to attend.

Piezoelectricity is the electric charge that accumulates in certain solid maters in response to applied mechanical stress. Piezoelectric thin films are of increasing interest in low voltage microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) for sensing, actuation, and energy harvesting. They also serve as model systems to study fundamental behavior in piezoelectrics.

The lecture will discuss how materials are optimized for these applications, as well as examples of the use of piezoelectric films over a wide range of length scales. The key figures of merit for actuators and energy harvesting will be discussed, with emphasis on how to achieve these on practical substrates.

To illustrate the functionality of these films, examples of the integration into MEMS structures will also be discussed, including adaptive optics for X-ray telescopes, low frequency and non-resonant piezoelectric energy harvesting devices, and piezoelectronic transistors as a potential replacement for CMOS electronics.

Trolier-McKinstry is the Steward S. Flaschen Professor of Ceramic Science and Engineering, Professor of Electrical Engineering, and Director of the Nanofabrication facility at the Pennsylvania State University.

She currently serves as an associate editor for Applied Physics Letters. She was the 2017 President of the Materials Research Society. Previously she served as president of the IEEE Ultrasonics, Ferroelectrics and Frequency Control Society, as well as Keramos.

Trolier-McKinstry will be the 19th Distinguished Lecturer in Clarkson University's New Horizons in Engineering series, which is dedicated to improving the understanding of important issues facing engineering and society in the 21st century.

For more details, please contact Dr. Liya Regel, Distinguished Research Professor of Engineering, New Horizons in Engineering Distinguished Lectureship series founder and chair, lregel@clarkson.edu.