Frequency control of sol–gel composite films fabricated by stencil printing for nondestructive testing applications

Abstract

Ultrasonic transducers made of sol–gel composites have been developed for nondestructive testing (NDT) applications in various industrial fields. Stencil printing of sol–gel composite films has been developed for the reduction of fabrication time and cost. However, it was necessary to develop low frequency (<10 MHz) ultrasonic transducers for inspecting industrial structures under severe high-temperature conditions, because high-frequency components suffer attenuation effect caused by high temperature. To realize this, increasing the thickness of Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 (PZT)/PZT films fabricated by stencil printing was attempted in this study. The samples were fabricated by single-layer stencil printing with a thick stencil mask and multilayer pure stencil printing with prespraying and postspraying. The film thicknesses were 150–185 µm, and the center frequencies of ultrasonic responses were 6.0–6.4 MHz. Throughout three thermal cycles of up to 370 K, the ultrasonic performance was stable, and the frequency characteristics were not markedly different from the beginning to the end of the test. Therefore, low-frequency ultrasonic transducers were successfully manufactured using a stencil-printing-based technique.