Kazuyoshi Izawa Japanese Industrial Awardee

Kazuyoshi Izawa is a researcher at the Institute for Fundamental Technology in Kyocera Corporation, Japan. He received his B.S. in Applied Chemistry Engineering (2004) and Ph.D in Engineering (2008) from Kumamoto University. He joined Kyocera in 2008.

His work focuses on the reliability of Ni inner-electrode multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) under high-temperature loading, particularly by identifying and evaluating localized areas of low resistance in MLCCs just before electrical breakdown. Notably, he has succeeded in visualizing the conduction path formed only in the local region of a single dielectric layer from the cross section in the stacking direction. His research captures the essential behavior of the insulation degradation according to the weakest link model, and the series of evaluation techniques is expected to contribute to both industry and academia in the field of insulation degradation of electronic components.

Dr. Izawa has authored 7 technical articles, including one accepted in 2020 that was selected as an APL Editor’s Pick. He has received the 74th Technical Encouragement Award (The Ceramic Society of Japan) and the 2019 Technology Promotion Award (Japan Fine Ceramics Association).