Abstract
Lead Zirconate Titanate oxide (PZT) thick films with thicknesses of up to 10 μmwere developed using a modified sol-gel technique. Usually, the film thickness is less than1 μm by conventional sol-gel processing, while the electrical charge accumulation whichreveals the direct effect of piezoelectricity is proportional to the film thickness and thereforerestricted. Two approaches were adopted to conventional sol-gel processing – precursorconcentration modulation and rapid thermal annealing. A 10 μm thick film was successfullyfabricated by coating 16 times via this technique. The thickness of each coating layer wasabout 0.6 μm and the morphology of the film was dense with a crack-free area as large as 16mm2. In addition, the structure, surface morphology and physical properties werecharacterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomicforce microscopy (AFM) and electrical performance. The dielectric constant and hysteresisloops were measured as electric characteristics. This study investigates the actuation andsensing performance of the vibrating structures with the piezoelectric thick film. Theactuation tests demonstrated that a 4 mm x 4 mm x 6.5 μm PZT film drove a 40 mm x 7 mmx 0.5 mm silicon beam as an actuator. Additionally, it generated an electrical signal of 60mVpp as a sensor, while vibration was input by a shaker. The frequencies of the first twomodes of the beam were compared with the theoretical values obtained by Euler-Bernoullibeam theory. The linearity of the actuation and sensing tests were also examined.
Highlights
Piezoelectric materials are extensively adopted owing to their many desirable characteristics
PZT films with thicknesses of between 1 and 10 μm were successfully fabricated by the modified sol-gel method using two techniques - precursor concentration modulation and rapid thermal annealing
The electrical characteristics were evaluated in terms of dielectric constants and hysteresis curves
Summary
Piezoelectric materials are extensively adopted owing to their many desirable characteristics They can transform electrical signals into mechanical deformation. The piezoelectric characteristics of sol-gel-derived PZT films tend to be inferior to those of bulk PZT, mainly because of the small grain size of the derived PZT films, which, in turn, results from the homogeneous nucleation of many crystalline PZT nuclei during crystallization. Two techniques were applied to increase the thickness of PZT films and reduce the duration of the fabrication process - precursor concentration modulation [20,21] and rapid thermal treatment [22]. Modified sol-gel approach based on rapid thermal annealing and a high concentration of PZT sol is utilized to yield a film of thickness 10 μm with a crack-free area as large as 16 mm. The sensing and actuation capacities of the films were successfully demonstrated
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