SYMPOSIUM 6 – Advanced Functional Ceramics for Solid-State Energy Conversion, Energy Storage, and GHz/THz Electronics

Advanced functional ceramics are central to emerging solid-state technologies for energy conversion, energy storage, and high-frequency information systems, yet progress across these fields is increasingly limited by common materials challenges. This symposium will bring together researchers working on dielectric, ferroelectric, electrocaloric and thermoelectric ceramics, solid-state electrolytes, microwave/GHz-THz dielectrics, and ceramic-based electro-/acousto-optic materials and devices. The focus will be on how composition, defects, microstructure, interfaces, phase transitions, texture, processing, and device architecture govern functional response, reliability, and scalability. By connecting communities that often meet separately, the symposium aims to identify transferable design principles across energy and electronic ceramics, from fundamental mechanisms to device-level performance. Contributions spanning experiment, theory, computation, advanced characterization, and manufacturing are encouraged, with particular emphasis on emerging materials concepts and cross-cutting strategies for next-generation ceramic technologies.

Session Topics:

Defects, interfaces, and microstructure engineering in functional ceramics
Phase transitions and coupled electromechanical, thermal, and optical responses in functional ceramics
Ceramics for energy storage, conversion, and solid-state ionics
High-frequency, photonic, and information-system ceramics
Advanced characterization, modeling, and data-driven ceramics design
Reliability, processing, and scalable manufacturing of functional ceramics

Symposium Organizer(s):

Mengfan Guo, University of Cambridge, UK
Jiamian Hu, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA
Michael Reece, Queen Mary University of London, UK
Kai He, University of California, Irvine, USA

Point(s) of Contact:

Mengfan Guo; mg2129@cam.ac.uk
Jiamian Hu; jhu238@wisc.edu
Michael Reece; m.j.reece@qmul.ac.uk

Division Sponsor(s):

Basic Science Division
Electronics Division
Energy Materials and Systems Division