Selected Papers from the 9th International Workshop on Piezoelectric Materials and Applications in Actuators

The 9th International Workshop on Piezoelectric Materials and Applications in Actuators (IWPMA 2012) was successfully held on 22–25 April 2012 in Hirosaki, Japan. The general chair was Prof. M.K. Kurosawa from the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan. In the past, Korea, Germany, Turkey, China, and USA have hosted the annual conference, but this was the first time for the annual IWPMA conference to be held in Japan. The IWPMA 2012 was organized as a joint symposium with JTTAS Smart Actuator/Sensor Study Committee and ICAT International Actuator Symposium. More than 150 people from the world (12 countries) participated and had fruitful discussions with 138 presentations including 11 invited talks. In addition to piezoelectric materials and piezoelectric actuators, the presentation topics were expanded to include solid-state actuators, energy harvesting, multifunctional materials, and other current important issues. It is our honor to pronounce that the “Sensors and Actuators A” journal has published this special issue on the IWPMA 2012 including the best 25 contributions. This issue covers the functional materials, such as piezoelectric and magnetostrictive materials, and their applications. However, for the innovative devices, various ideas concerning materials, mechanisms, designs, fabrication process, and control-systems are also required to be organically combined. From the view of this concept, we believe the published 25 papers can excite the researcher's intellectual curiosity concerning these issues and can serve as the driving force for further breakthroughs. Please enjoy the latest research results selected by our editor team. Finally, we appreciate all participants in the IWPMA 2012 and the devoted reviewers for the publication. We hope that the papers in this special issue will open up the next researches, which will be presented in the future IWPMA conferences.