Proceedings of 8th European Conference on Applications of Polar Dielectrics (ECAPD-8). Guest Editorial
Résumé
The present volumes of Ferroelectrics include the Proceedings of the 8th European Conference on Applications of Polar Dielectrics (ECAPD'8). The conference was held in Metz (France) on September 5–8, 2006 and was organized by the Laboratoire Matériaux Optiques, Photonique et Systèmes (LMOPS), which is associated to the University of Metz, to the CNRS and to the Engineering School Supélec.
This series of conferences, initiated in 1988 in Zurich, was hosted for the first time in France and has seen the attendance of 197 participants from academic, government and industrial laboratories. The geographical origin of the attendees included 31 countries from Europe, North-Africa, the Middle-East, North-America (USA, Canada, and Mexico), Asia (Japan, China, South Korea) and New-Zealand. Among the papers presented at the conference and submitted for the Proceedings, 79 have been accepted for publication and are contained in these volumes of Ferroelectrics.
Three plenary keynote lectures were given by leading scientists in their field. Prof. L. R. Dalton (University of Washington, Seattle, USA) presented an overview of the latest developments and improvements of organic electro-optic materials and their integration into devices. Prof. S. J. Putterman (UCLA, Los Angeles, USA) presented the recent pioneering work of his group utilizing the pyroelectric properties of LiNbO3 for the realization of table-top nuclear fusion. Finally, Dr. D. J. Wouters (IMEC, Leuven, Belgium) gave a complete overview of the requirements, state-of-the art and future prospects of emerging non-volatile memories technologies including FeRAM's.
The main part of the conference was structured in three parallel sessions featuring 28 oral invited presentations covering almost all the topics relevant to this conference series and 64 contributed oral talks. A total of 139 poster presentations were scheduled in two separate sessions.
With respect to previous ECAPD conferences, a stronger emphasis was given to optical materials, properties and devices with 5 oral sessions (out of 22) and several poster presentations dedicated to the subject. Other important topics that were discussed in detail by several researchers concerned studies of ferroelectric domains and their engineering, ferroelectric nanoparticles and nanocomposites, ferroelectrets, ferroics, multiferroics, ferroelectric thin films, as well as dielectric spectroscopy of materials. Important emphasis was given also to studies of piezoelectric properties and devices and of relaxor materials with a total of 5 oral sessions and several posters.
The works during the four days of the conference have confirmed the existence of a lively and strongly active community studying polar dielectric materials in all their aspects, from fundamentals to their applications and devices. One of the advantages of such a meeting with a rather interdisciplinary character is to bring together and enhance the scientific exchange among researchers dealing with the same type of materials but with often very different purposes. The continuation of the conference series for the next two editions has been already decided. The international advisory board has assigned the responsibility of the organization of ECAPD'9 to Prof. Francesco Michelotti of the University La Sapienza of Rome (Italy). It will take place in the fall of 2008 on the isle of Capri. ECAPD'10 will take place in Edinburgh (Scotland) in 2010 and will be organized by Prof. Andrew Bell of the University of Leeds.
We would like to express our highest and sincere thanks to all who helped in the organization of the conference and especially to the members of the Organizing Committee, of the International Advisory Board and the members of the laboratory LMOPS.
A special thank goes to the “Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Arts et Métiers (ENSAM)” and to its Director G. Kugel for accepting to host the conference in the locals of ENSAM and for helping us in the organization of this event. We are also very indebted to J.-L. Schwartz and all services of ENSAM Metz for the highly professional technical assistance and help. Our gratitude goes also to Hubert Keller, who has given a wonderful artistic flavour to the conference hall.
The conference would not have been possible without the generous support of several sponsors. We are specially thankful to the Conseil Régional de Lorraine, the Conseil Général de Moselle, the Communauté d'Agglomération de Metz Métropole (CA2M), the bank Casden, the University Paul-Verlaine of Metz, Supélec, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) and the Groupement de Recherches (GDR) CNRS FiFA. Last but not least, we are very indebted to the Taylor & Francis Group for accepting to publish the Proceedings of this conference in the journal Ferroelectrics.
Finally, we would like to express our great gratitude to all participants who primarily contributed to the great success of the meeting and to the numerous attendees that accepted an additional burden of work to help us with the review of the Proceedings manuscripts.
