Innovation by material design   Interview with Dr. Justinus Slakhorst, CTO of the Ceramic Components Division of EPCOS on the R&D strategy for ceramics.

Where will your division be in five years time?

Our ceramic components business will be significantly bigger and more diversified - and highly innovative. It will be based on our R&D in materials, processes and products. More than a third of Ceramic Components' sales are already accounted for by actuators, sensors and protection components that are less than three years old.

What role does the Christian Doppler Laboratory play in your R&D strategy?

As an area of research, ferroics is just as promising for the future as nanotechnology, for instance. Ferroic materials offer a huge number of potential applications. We are now looking into whether ferromagnetic materials can be used for new sensor products and actuators.

But basic research alone is insufficient for the development of technologically superior products. That requires competence in other technologies too. Take our new rugged platinum sensors for measuring temperatures above 500 to 1000 °C, for example. They are suitable for use in automobile exhaust or combustion systems. We can implement these sensor solutions only because of the close interaction between our material research and our process and product development. In this case it is our competence in package technologies.

How do the customers benefit from your research?

Our extended basic research will allow us to offer products that are significantly improved in terms of properties such as material aging and degradation. We will achieve these innovative successes thanks to highly specific material designs rather than through a drawn-out and complex series of material tests. Over the long term, we will be able to use these elements to design the structure and thus also the electrical properties of materials even more efficiently.