Abstract
Piezoelectric composites are a class of functional materials consisting of piezoelectric active materials and non-piezoelectric passive polymers, mechanically attached together to form different connectivities. These composites have several advantages compared to conventional piezoelectric ceramics and polymers, including improved electromechanical properties, mechanical flexibility and the ability to tailor properties by using several different connectivity patterns. These advantages have led to the improvement of overall transducer performance, such as transducer sensitivity and bandwidth, resulting in rapid implementation of piezoelectric composites in medical imaging ultrasounds and other acoustic transducers. Recently, new piezoelectric composite transducers have been developed with optimized composite components that have improved thermal stability and mechanical quality factors, making them promising candidates for high temperature, high power transducer applications, such as therapeutic ultrasound, high power ultrasonic wirebonding, high temperature non-destructive testing, and downhole energy harvesting. This paper will present recent developments of piezoelectric composite technology for high temperature and high power applications. The concerns and limitations of using piezoelectric composites will also be discussed, and the expected future research directions will be outlined.
Highlights
Piezoelectric materials convert electrical energy into mechanical/vibrational energy and vice versa.Using the direct and converse piezoelectric effects, piezoelectric materials have been implemented for a wide range of sensors, actuators, and transducer applications
One single piezoelectric material phase does not provide all of these features, and the performance of ultrasound transducers is limited by the trade-off between high piezoelectric activity and low density with mechanical flexibility
Piezoelectric transducers have been widely used in a range of medical applications, including ultrasound diagnostic imaging, acoustic radiation force impulse (ARFI) imaging, and ultrasound therapy, such as high intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU)
Summary
Piezoelectric materials convert electrical energy into mechanical/vibrational energy and vice versa. A variety of applications exist where actuators, sensors and transducers able to operate at elevated temperatures (>100 °C) or high power condition would be extremely beneficial These include non-destructive testing (NDT), structural health monitoring, energy harvesting, underwater acoustics, medical therapy and wire-bonding, to name but a few. The uses of conventional piezocomposites have been limited in high power and/or high temperature applications due to their inherently low mechanical quality factors, relatively low thermal conductivity and high thermal expansion of the polymer fillers. A low thermal conductivity of polymer reduces thermal dissipation to surrounding environment and results in localized hot spots adjacent to piezoelectric pillars in 1–3 composites that can melt the polymer To overcome these issues, appropriate selection of composite components is of paramount importance, and this paper reviews the recent developments in high temperature and high power piezocomposites.
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