Lecture in Materials 8: Angie Richardson & Lindsay Fuoco "Piezoelectric ceramic processing"

Piezoelectric ceramic industry is a 1.4 billion dollar market with applications as varied as sonar and navigation systems for the US Navy to medical ultrasonics to watch alarms. The ceramic formulation and processing not only requires structural integrity, but also a high efficiency electrical characteristic that can convert electrical signal to mechanical energy, or mechanical to electrical signal. Piezoceramic technology continues to evolve with material formulation and processing. Our presentation will provide an overview of piezoelectric ceramic, a brief technology of how it works, piezo applications, current manufacturing process and the next generation technology of piezo textured ceramic.
Angie Richardson graduated from the University of MN, Institute of Technology with a metallurgical engineering degree. After starting in materials research at the Idaho National Lab, Angie spent 40 years in the ceramic manufacturing industry in career roles of process engineering, engineering management and operations director for a ceramic-acoustic facility employing 200 people. The SLC facility (now L3) produced over one million ceramic components annually for commercial US and international markets and was a critical supplier to the US Government sonar industry. Angie was a key technical expert to an Israel based medical start-up to define a PMN-PT (lead magnesium niobate-lead titanate) composition that went on to be a component of a cancer treatment used worldwide. Angie is currently a consultant in the piezoceramic industry for the US Navy and commercial industry.