2021 Buessem Award Recipient
Dr. Takaaki Tsurumi received his Ph.D from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan, in 1985; he has since risen to the rank of Professor in the School of Materials and Chemical Technology at that same institute. He has been studying structure and properties of dielectric and ferroelectric oxides for 30 years and is author and co-author of 350 scientific papers, 50 reviews, and 10 books. He made artificial superlattices with the perovskite structure and found these superlattices showed anomalously high dielectric permittivity in the film plane. He also demonstrated that ferroelectricity could be induced in the superlattices by controlling stacking periodicity of the superlattices. He clarified the domain contributions to the nonlinear responses in piezoelectric ceramics by measuring frequency dependence of piezoelectric constant. He has been working on multi-layered ceramics capacitors and reported the core and shell contributions to the nonlinear dielectric response. He has also developed the system to measure ultra-wide range dielectric spectra, which is a key technology to understand the polarization mechanisms in dielectric materials. By using this technique, he revealed the mechanism of the grain size effect in barium titanate and other perovskite ferroelectrics. The grain size effect was interpreted as the superposition of the domain-wall contributions to the dielectric response combined with a grain boundary effect reducing polarization. His recent research focuses on the development of energy storage capacitors using long-range ionic motion.
Dr. Tsurumi has also contributed extensively to the community of electroceramics, serving as Vice President of the Ceramics Society of Japan (2019-2020), President of the Fulrath Okazaki Memorial Association in Japan (2015-present), Chairman of the Electronics Division of the Ceramics Society of Japan, among others. He has organized several international conferences, the most recent being as General Chair of PacRim-13 at Okinawa (2019) and IFAAP at Hiroshima (2018). Among his many awards are the Fulrath Award of the American Ceramic Society (2003), Award of Academic Achievements in Ceramics Science and Technology of the Ceramics Society of Japan (2005), IEEE Ferroelectric Recognition Award (2011), IEEE Distinguished Lecturer (2013), American Ceramics Society Fellow (2019), and IEEE-UFFC Achievement Award (2020).
Dr. Tsurumi was honored in absentia for the 2021 Buessem Award at the CDP Fall 2022 Meeting on October 5, 2022. He will be officially presented with the award at a future meeting.