Materials play critical roles in various objects. Examples include structural materials consisting of structural objects such as buildings, vehicles, machines, and so on, and functional materials constituting essential parts of electronic, magnetic, or optical devices. Researches are going on to improve their performance or to understand the bases behind it. Possibilities of what materials could bring in to us are infinite.
Our group studies the relationships between characteristics of materials and their structures in various size scales. Our research is also targeted to the processes to control the structures focusing on energy materials such as thermoelectric materials. We hope that our activities of materials researches make contributions to the improvements of the quality of human life and the accumulation of mankind's knowledge.

Our Goal


Enhancement of material functions through structure control

"From angstroms to millimeters"

Materials have structures in various size scales. Functional properties often depends on structure. We are interested in extracting desired material functions by controlling there structure in various size scales. To achieve this, we need to get an insight into the true nature such as how the structure is formed and how it affects the functional property. Currently, the group focuses on thermoelectric materials.

Notices
  • 2016/7/5：Prof. Yoshihiro Yamazaki will visit our campus and will give a talk on thermochemical production of hydgrogen and solid state fuel cells on July 26th. No registration is needed. Please attend.
Date and time：4:15pm, July 26th
Place：Bldg W3, Rm 403
Lecture：Prof. Yoshihiro Yamazaki, Inamori Frontier Research Center, Kyushu University.

Group news

  • 2016/6/2：We present our research at ICT 2016 (the 35th International Conference on Thermoelectrics), which is held in Wuhan, China from May 29th to June 2nd, 2016. 
    Kosuke Watanobe, Ye Hong, Tetsuya Adachi, Takashi Inozaki, Yasuharu Saruta, Naotoshi Uchida, Teruyuki Ikeda, Nanostructuring thermoelectric materials and its functions in various aspects.
    Teruyuki Ikeda, Takafumi Kojima, Hiromi Kawaguchi, Takuya Ide, Hideo Nakajima, Fabrication of porous thermoelectric materials with unidirectionally elongated pores.
  • 2016/5/22："Kogaku-sai + Open Campus" is held at the College of Engineering of Ibaraki University (Hitachi Campus). Kogaku-sai means "engineering festival." Our group demonstrates "thermoelectric material generates electricity from heat.
  • 2016/4/22：A paper on the phase field simulation on the nanostructure evolution in Mg2Si, which has been performed as a cooperative work with Prof. Y. Sasajima (Ibaraki Univ.), has been published:  Bin Liu, Teruyuki Ikeda and Yasushi Sasajima, Simulation of the Si precipitation process in Mg2Si using a phase-field kinetic model, Mater. Trans., 57 (2016), 922-926.
  • 2016/4/18： Babak Alinejad joins our group as a researcher on the NEDO project.
  • 2016/4/11：Two senior students (Akiko Saitoh and Takuya Yamazaki) join our group.
  • 2016/4/1：Naotoshi Uchida joins our group as a researcher on the NEDO project.
  • 2016/3/28：The commencement is held on March 23rd. The three master course students (Toshiya Suzuki, Yuya Tamaru, Makoto Horii) and the three senior students (Takashi Inozaki, Yasuhiro Saruta, Hidekazu Watanabe) get their degrees respectively. It has been almost three years since this research group was opened. This year we are supposed to put out our research achievements, which we have grown so far. We'll do our best to meet the expectations.
  • 2016/3/23-25：2016 Spring Annual (158th) Meeting of the Japan Institute of Metals and Materials is held at Tokyo University of Science. Our group make four presentations as follows.
T. Kojima, T. Ikeda  et al., "Fabrication of porous thermoelectric Si and Mg2Si with aligned cylindrical pores." (Session: Thermoelectric Materials)
K. Watanobe and T. Ikeda, "Nanostructuring and dopant solubilities of thermoelectric materials." (Session: Thermoelectric Materials)
T. Adachi, He Yong et al., "Nanostructuring thermoelectric silicon and its solibilities of dopants." (Poster session)
B. Liu  et al., "Phase-field simulation of precipitation growth in Mg2Si and Si" (Poster session)
A. Ikeda (NIMS), T. Ikeda, "An efficient examination of phase diagrams of multicomponent systems using multiple diffusion couple pellets" (Session: Phase diagrams and phase equilibria)

  • 2016/2/14-18：Prof. Ikeda gives an invited presentation on "Nanostructuring silicon base materials and its impacts on the thermoelectric properties" in TMS 2016 (Nashville, Tennessee).
  • 2015/12/21：A comentary paper by T. Ikeda has been published on the Journal of the Thermoelectrics Society of Japan (12 (2015), No. 2, 20-23). The title is "For the control of the microstructures of thermoelectric materials — (3) quantification of microstructure."
  • 2015/10/28：2015 Annual Symposium of Education and Research Centers of the College of Engineering is held.
    The Green Device Education and Research Center, which our group belongs to,  present our recent research activities.
  • A research project that the Green Device Education and Research Center proposed with Saitama University, National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), and Tobitarika Glass Seisakusyo has been adoted by the Advanced Research Program for Energy and Envirronmental Technologies of the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO). The title of the project is "High-efficiency thermoelectric conversion system via innovative nanoscale control."
  • 2015/9/16-18：2015 Fall Annual (157th) Meeting of the Japan Institute of Metals and Materials is held at Kyushu University. Our group make three presentations as follows:
T. Kojima et al., "Fabrication of porous thermoelectric materials with aligned cylindrical pores."
T. Suzuki et al., "High-throuput studies on thermoelectric materials using composition-graded samples fabricated by unidirectional solidification."
K. Watanobe et al., "Nanostructuring thermoelectric silicon and its solibilities of dopants."
  • 2015/9/7-8：The annual meeting of the Thermoelectric Society of Japan is held at Kyushu University.  Prof. Ikeda  gives a talk on "Fabrication of porous thermoelectric materials with aligned columnar pores."
  • 2015/8/24：A comentary paper by T. Ikeda has been published on the Journal of the Thermoelectrics Society of Japan (12 (2015), No. 1, 20-24). The title is "For the control of the microstructures of thermoelectric materials — (2) size and morphology control."
  • 2015/7/12：The Open Campus of the College of Engineering is held. Our group demostrates the operation of thermoelectric devices.
  • 2015/6/17：Prof. Ikeda gives an invited presentation in the Tohoku Branch of the Mining and Materials Processing Institute of Japan. The title of the  presentation is "Researches on thermoelectric materials—the current status and future."
  • 2015/6/10：The City Gas Symposium 2015 is held by the Japan Gas Association. Prof. Ikeda gives a poster presentation on the power generation using porous thermoelectric materials.
  • 2015/5/31："Kogaku-sai + Open Campus" is held at the College of Engineering of Ibaraki University (Hitachi Campus). Kogaku-sai means "engineering festival." Our group demonstrates "thermoelectric material generates electricity from heat."
  • 2015/4/14：A comentary paper by T. Ikeda has been published on the Journal of the Thermoelectrics Society of Japan (11 (2015), No. 3, 21-25). The title is "For the control of the microstructures of thermoelectric materials — (1) Equilibrium phase diagrams and various reactions."
  • 2015/4/13：Four senior students (Takashi Inozaki, Yasuhiro Saruta, Hidekazu Watanabe) join our group.
  • 2015/4/7：Enrollment ceremony is held. Ms. Ye Hong joins our group.
  • 2015/3/24：The commencement is held. The four senior students in the group get the diploma.
  • 2015/3/18：Prof. Ikeda gives an invited talk on microstructure control of thermoelectric materials in TMS 2015 (Orlando, Florida, US).
  • 2015/2/16：All the senior students in the group submit their graduation thesis.
  • 2015/2/9：All the senior students in the department present their graduation thesis.
  • 2015/1/29：High temperature furnace (FT-01VAC-1650, FULL-TECH Corp.) is delivered.
  • 2014/11/26：There is the poster session presented by senior students in the department. The result of the presentation contest is announced. Miss Kwon Ain from our group wins the No. 1 position in the department.
  • 2014/10/15：Spark Plasma Sintering equipment (SPD4000-I, Dai-ichi Kiden Co., Ltd.) is delivered.
  • 2014/9/29,30：The annual meeting of the Thermoelectric Society of Japan  is held at NIMS (the National Institute of Materials Science in Tsukuba.  The three graduate students, Suzuki, Tamaru, and Horii, present their recent research in the poster session.
  • 2014/9/10：Glove Box (UL-1000A, UNICO Co., Ltd.) is delivered. The grove box is equipped with the inert gas purification system (CM-200, UNICO Co., Ltd.).
  • 2014/9/2：Students from Hanoi University of Science visit our university on September 1-5th. Prof. Ikeda give a lecture on an introduction to thermoelectrics for the students on September 2nd.
  • 2014/8/21：Mr. Saneyuki Ohno, a PhD candidate (Materials Science) at California Institute of Technology, visits our group. He gives a talk on his experiences in studying abroad and his research on thermoelectric materials.
  • 2014/8/7,14：Prof. Ikeda is interviewed for a radio program "Pitatto-Radion," by FM Hitachi (82.2 MHz). The interview is broadcasted from 19:00 on August 7th (Thu) and 14th (Thu).
  • 2014/7/13：The Open Campus of the College of Engineering is held. Prof. Ikeda gives a talk on thermoelectrics.
  • 2014/7/2：An internship program for highschool students is held. Our group has several students from the Hitachi-kita High School and carries out simple experiments and discussion redarding thermoelectric conversion.
  • 2014/7/1：A commentary paper by Prof. Ikeda is published in Issue 7, Vol. 53 of Materia (The Japan Institute of Metals and Materials (JIM)). (T. Ikeda, "Nanostructured bulk thermoelectric materials," Materia, 53 (2014), 307-311)
  • 2014/6/20：A feature article on the Ibaraki Prefecture in the THE NIKKAN KOGYO SHIMBUN (news paper) describes the researches going on at the Green Device Education and Research Center in the College of Engineering, Ibaraki University, which our group belongs to.
  • 2014/6/1："Kogaku-sai + Open Campus" is held at the College of Engineering of Ibaraki University (Hitachi Campus). Kogaku-sai means "engineering festival." Our group demonstrates "thermoelectric material generates electricity from heat."
  • 2014/5/29：Prof. Ikeda gives a lecture on "Future of thermoelectric conversion technology —toward waste heat recovery" at the Graduate School of Science and Engineering of Ibaraki University. Open to public. Click here for the details.
  • 2014/5/22：A ball mill system is delivered. ("Planet Min," Nagao System Inc.)
  • 2014/4/27：The English page opens!
  • 2014/4/11：Four senior students (Tetsuya Adachi, Takafumi Kojima, Kwon Ain, Kosuke Watanobe) join our group. 
  • 2014/3/26：An article on "Staying at Caltech" is published on the bulletin of the Thermoelectric Society of Japan. (T. Ikeda, Bull. Thermoele. Soc. Jpn., 10 (2014), 35-37.)
  • 2014/3/25：The commencement is held. The four senior students get the diploma. The result of the graduation thesis presentation contest is announced. Mr. Yuta Sudo from our group wins the No. 1 position in the department. Mr. Toshiya Suzuki gets the No. 3.
  • 2014/2/20：Prof. Ikeda gives an invited presentation on nanostructuring thermoelectric materials in TMS 2014 (San Diego, California, US). The title of the talk is "Nanostructuring of thermoelectric materials via a nonequilibrium intermediate state."
  • 2014/2/14：All the senior students in the group submit their graduation thesis.
  • 2014/2/10：All the senior students in the department present their graduation thesis.
  • 2013/12/9：A review paper on the microsturcutre control of thermoelecltric materials is published. (N.A. Heinz, T. Ikeda, Y.Pei, G.J. Snyder, Applying Quantitative Microstructure Control in Advanced Functional Composites, Adv. Funct. Mater., 24 (2014), 2135-2153.)
  • 2013/10/1：A commentary paper on the combinatorial method for bulk materials is published in Kinzoku (Agne Gijutsu Center) (T. Ikeda, H. Ohta, "A high through-put approach to bulk thermoelectric materials," Kinzoku, 83 (2014), 870-876)
  • 2013/4/26：A paper on the solubility of Na in PbTe is published．(S.A. Yamini, T. Ikeda, A. Lalonde, Y. Pei, S.X. Doua, G.J. Snyder, Rational design of p-type thermoelectric PbTe: temperature dependent sodium solubility, J. Mater. Chem. 1A (2013), 8725-8730)
  • 2013/4/11：Four senior students (Toshiya Suzuki, Yuta Sudo, Yuya Tamaru, Makoto Horii join the group.
  • 2013/4/1  ：The group opens.
English page opened 4.27.2014, renewed 7.6.2016