Kawada works to research and develop piezoelectric ceramics including lead zirconate titanate-based ceramics and lead free piezoelectric ceramics. Piezoelectric ceramic components have been widely used in various electronic equipment as piezoelectric actuators, ultrasonic sensor, buzzer, shock sensor, resonator and filter. For these piezoelectric components, there are two main issues in piezoelectric ceramics. One is low displacement property of piezoelectric ceramics, and the other is lead-containing of widely used piezoelectric ceramics; lead zirconate titanate-based ceramic.

One of Kawada’s main achievements is the fabrication of potassium sodium niobate-based multilayer piezoelectric ceramics co-fired with nickel inner electrodes. Conventional lead zirconate titanate-based piezoelectric multilayer ceramics are usually co-fired with silver palladium electrodes and cannot be co-fired with nickel electrodes. Nickel electrodes have many advantages, such as high electromigration resistance and greater cost effectiveness than silver palladium. On this point, his fabricated nickel inner electrode potassium sodium niobate-based multilayer piezoelectric ceramics are not only lead-free piezoelectric ceramics, but also have better feature than conventional lead zirconate titanate-based multilayer piezoelectric ceramics.

Kawada graduated from Department of Physics, Osaka University. He earned a master’s degree of science from the Graduate School of Science, Osaka University. He studied quantum field theory of many-body systems in the graduate school. After joining Murata, he started the development of lead zirconate titanate-based ceramics. Then he researched lead-free piezoelectric ceramics and grain-oriented ceramics.

Kawada has been an author on 17 technical articles. He holds 16 registered patents in Japan and 10 registered patents in US.

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