Kenji Shibata

Kenji Shibata works as a project leader for SCIOCS, Ltd in Japan, where he is involved with research and development of (K,Na)NbO3 [KNN] lead-free piezoelectric films. His group succeeded in fabricating high quality KNN films, which had excellent piezoelectric properties comparable to those of PZT films. They also have succeeded in developing 3-axis angular rate sensor that employs KNN films, and it achieved the same level of angular rate sensing properties as PZT film sensors.

He was trained in Electronics at Kyusyu University in Japan (BA, 1993 and M.Eng, 1995). After graduation, he joined Hitachi Cable, Ltd (After that, the name of Hitachi Cable was changed into SCIOCS throughout two times of M&A), and engaged in research and development of epitaxial wafers for LED and laser diode grown by MOCVD. Using his strong background in film growth, he started the research of KNN films grown by sputtering since 2005. During the research, he invented physically based new methods which enabled the dramatic increase in the piezoelectric properties of the KNN films and overturned common knowledge in this field. His recent activities brought 6 reviewed research papers. Also, he was asked to give presentations as an invited speaker in international conferences, such as piezoelectric-MEMS workshop (two times), US-Japan seminar, IUMRS-ICA, and IUMRS-ICEM. By summarizing these research results, he obtained a doctor’s degree at Kyusyu University in 2013.

His current dream is to replace tremendous amount of PZT-using devices into this lead-free KNN devices.