Carnegie Mellon University

Elizabeth Dickey

Elizabeth C. Dickey

Teddy & Wilton Hawkins Distinguished Professor and Department Head, Materials Science and Engineering

Address
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh, PA 15213

Area of Expertise

Energy Storage

Bio

Professor Elizabeth Dickey received her B.S. in Materials Engineering from the University of Kentucky and Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Northwestern University. Prior to joining Carnegie Mellon in 2021, she was a Distinguished Professor and Associate Head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at North Carolina State University where she also directed the Center for Dielectrics and Piezoelectrics. Earlier in her career, she was a faculty member in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University, where she also served as an Associate Director of the Materials Research Institute.

Education

Ph.D. Materials Science & Engineering, Northwestern University

B.S. Materials Engineering, University of Kentucky

Research

Research includes the development and study of inorganic materials for high-energy-density capacitors, solid-state batteries and fuel cells.  Expertise includes materials processing, multi-length-scale structural and chemical characterization, electrical characterization and highly accelerated life time testing.  

Professor Dickey’s research aims to develop processing-structure-property relationships for materials in which the macroscopic physical properties are governed by point defects, grain boundaries or internal interfaces. She is regarded as leader in the application of electron microscopy and spectroscopy techniques to understanding the role of material defects and disorder on the polarization behavior and the coupled electrical/chemical transport in dielectric materials. In addition, she studies defect-mediated properties in ceramic composites and nanomaterials, which are being developed for a variety of energy and structural applications. She has published over 150 peer-reviewed journal articles in these areas, which have been cited over twenty-thousand times.

Publications

Atomic-resolution electron microscopy of nanoscale local structure in lead-based relaxor ferroelectrics Kumar, A., Baker, J. N., Bowes, P. C., Cabral, M. J., Zhang, S., Dickey, E. C., … LeBeau, J. M. (2021), Nature Materials, 9. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41563-020-0794-5

A thermal perspective of flash sintering: The effect of AC current ramp rate on microstructure evolution Grimley, C. A., Funni, S., Green, C., & Dickey, E. C. (2020), Journal of the European Ceramic Society, 11. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jeurceramsoc.2020.11.040

Crystallization behavior of amorphous BaTiO3 thin films Ryu, G. H., Lewis, N. P., Kotsonis, G. N., Maria, J.-P., & Dickey, E. C. (2020), Journal of Materials Science, 4. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-020-04637-z

Interfacial stability and ionic conductivity enhanced by dopant segregation in eutectic ceramics: the role of Gd segregation in doped CeO2/CoO and CeO2/NiO interfaces Orera, A., Wang, F., Ferreiro-Vila, E., Serrano-Zabaleta, S., Larrañaga, A., Laguna-Bercero, M. A., … Larrea, Á. (2020), Journal of Materials Chemistry A. https://doi.org/10.1039/C9TA12315F

Low frequency dielectric properties related to structure of cotton fabrics Mukai, Y., Dickey, E. C., & Suh, M. (2020), IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON DIELECTRICS AND ELECTRICAL INSULATION, 27(1), 314–321. https://doi.org/10.1109/TDEI.2019.008511

Remembering Joanna McKittrick Fahrenholtz, B., Brennecka, G., Dickey, E., Ferreira, J., Klein, L., Mauro, J., … Martin, M. (2020), Journal of the American Ceramic Society, 103(4), 2277–2277. https://doi.org/10.1111/jace.16967

Barrier formation at BaTiO3 interfaces with Ni and NiO Long, D. M., Klein, A., & Dickey, E. C. (2019), Applied Surface Science, 466, 472–476. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apsusc.2018.10.040

Cold sintering with dimethyl sulfoxide solutions for metal oxides Kang, X., Floyd, R., Lowum, S., Long, D., Dickey, E., & Maria, J.-P. (2019), Journal of Materials Science, 54(10), 7438–7446. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-019-03410-1

Data‐driven glass/ceramic science research: Insights from the glass and ceramic and data science/informatics communities De Guire, E., Bartolo, L., Brindle, R., Devanathan, R., Dickey, E. C., Fessler, J., … Weber, R. (2019), Journal of the American Ceramic Society, 102(11), 6385–6406. https://doi.org/10.1111/jace.16677

Effect of boundary conditions on reduction during early stage flash sintering of YSZ Grimley, C. A., Prette, A. L. G., & Dickey, E. C. (2019), Acta Materialia, 174, 271–278. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.actamat.2019.05.001