Ahmad Safari

Ahmad Safari’s research interests include the structure-property relationships in ferroelectric, dielectric and piezoelectric materials in the form of thin films, bulk ceramics & ceramic –polymer composites for sensor and actuator applications, solid free form fabrication of advance functional materials. Recent work at Dr. Safari’s Glenn Howatt Electroceramic Laboratory has emphasized the development of Pb-Free piezoelectric ceramics and epitaxial thin films in KNN and BNT based compositions. The group works to probe the fundamental mechanisms and processing parameters that control the magnitude of the achievable properties. It was demonstrated that Mn addition to KNN-LT-LS target resulted in a significant suppression of leakage current and enhancement of polarization saturation in epitaxial thin films. The interest in novel actuator development to amplify displacement response extended to monolithic multimaterial electrostrictive-piezoelectric bi-layer composite. We have demonstrated that monolithic composite can be utilized in Cymbal and unimorph design to achieve very high displacement.  Micropen direct writing has been utilized to develop thick films for energy and high frequency transducer applications. The group is beginning to work in Multiferroic thin films by PLD method.

•    Ph.D., Solid State Science, Pennsylvania State University, 1983
•    M.S., Physics, Tabriz University, Iran, 1974
•    B.S., Physics, Tabriz University, Iran, 1972