High Electromechanical Coupling Coefficient Research Articles

Электроакустические свойства различных типов кварца в мелкодисперсном состоянии

An electroacoustic echo method for studying the high-frequency (HF) electrical and elastic properties of piezoelectric materials in a finely dispersed state is described. The characteristics and relaxation time of electroacoustic echo for natural and artificial quartz powders are determined. Natural one is represented by the following types: smoky quartz, citrine, amethyst, recrystallized, granular and columnar. It is shown that natural quartz (especially citrine), has a higher electromechanical coupling coefficient than artificial quartz. The amplitudes of HF electric field are determined, at which the saturation mode of the echo signals is observed.

Flexible 1-3 Piezoelectric Composites with Soft Embedded Conductive Interconnects for Underwater Acoustic Transducers

1-3 Piezoelectric composites have been widely used in underwater acoustic transducers because of their advanced electromechanical coupling properties relative to bulk piezoelectric ceramics. However, the existing applied composites are mainly rigid 1-3 PZT–epoxy resin composites, which have rigid structures and cannot be adapted to various sonar carriers with complex surfaces. Here, we design and develop a flexible 1-3 PZT–silicone rubber composite (PSC) for the first time. PSC combines a soft silicone rubber polymer in PZT with flexible embedded island-bridge conductive interconnects to enable the flexibility of both the piezoelectric sensing core and the electrical layer. The flexible wide bridge structure embedded in the polymer can cope with the large bending deformation of PSC with good conductive property, while the rigid thin island structure ensures the high acoustic performance of piezoelectric materials. A PSC sample is prepared with its structural parameters optimized via finite element analysis and is experimentally verified to have good flexibility, high electromechanical coupling coefficient (kt = 0.7), great thermal stability (from 25 to 105 °C), and bending stability (bending angle up to 215°). In addition, a preparation method for flexible 1-3 PSC is introduced, which has the advantages of high efficiency, low cost, no sample size restriction, and no high-temperature operation. The flexible 1-3 PSC in this work paves an important way for the development and application of the next generation of flexible underwater acoustic transducers.

Fabrication and characterization of hybrid bulk and surface acoustic wave resonators with Ag/patterned-AlN/Mo/diamond/Si layered structure

Hybrid bulk acoustic wave and surface acoustic wave (BAW/SAW) devices attract extensive interests due to their high electromechanical coupling coefficient and quality factor. In this study, longitudinal BAW coupled SAW resonators with piezoelectric AlN inter-digital transducers (IDT) were simulated and fabricated on diamond substrates to increase the working frequency as well. The simulated figure of merit value is 104, 123 % improved comparing with the corresponding metal IDT of 46.5. The frequency response spectrum of single port reflection (S11) shows dominant harmonic resonance at 913 MHz with electromechanical coupling coefficient of 2.16 % and quality factor of 913. These results indicate mutual transductions between BAW and SAW occur with sufficient efficiency in hybrid structures, which is analyzed and interpreted by equivalent acoustic impedance theory.

The Versatility of Piezoelectric Composites

Piezoelectric materials possess the capability to interchangeably convert electrical energy into a mechanical response. While current piezoelectric materials exhibit strong properties, known limitations have inhibited further development. This review describes the ability to combine different piezoelectric materials into a composite to create well-rounded properties. The different types of connectivity classes are described as well as important design considerations and theoretical models. The contributions from the active and passive phases are outlined, focusing primarily on ferroelectric ceramics and polymer-based composites. The key advantage of piezoelectric composites is their ability to combine the flexibility of polymers with the high electromechanical coupling and piezoelectric coefficients of ferroelectric ceramics or single crystals appropriate for a variety of applications. Composites are prominent in medical ultrasound imaging and therapy, underwater acoustic sensing, industrial structural health monitoring, energy harvesting, and numerous other emerging applications.

Fuzzy logic based active vibration control using novel photostrictive composites

Although conventional actuators like piezoelectric and electrostrictive are efficient, but they required hard wiring, which contaminates the control signal and adds to the weight of the structure. The current study presents a wireless control strategy using photostrictive actuators. Owing to the fortunate combination of photovoltaic effect and converse piezoelectric effect, a photostrictive actuator can generate mechanical strain, when irradiated with light intensity. Limited choices of photostrictive material with high electromechanical coupling coefficient give the motivation to design photostrictive composites. The finite element-based formulation incorporating fuzzy logic controller is employed to study the active vibration control response of cantilever structure when equipped with photostrictive composite actuator. A parametric study has been carried out to study the influence of inclusion’s volume fraction on wireless active vibration control of the structure. Control merits have been defined to compare the control performance of different composites. It is found that particulate composites are the better choice for lightweight structure and fiber composites are better if there is no weight constraint.

ScAlN Film-Based Piezoelectric Micromechanical Ultrasonic Transducers with Dual-Ring Structure for Distance Sensing

Piezoelectric micromechanical ultrasonic transducers (pMUTs) are new types of distance sensors with great potential for applications in automotive, unmanned aerial vehicle, robotics, and smart homes. However, previously reported pMUTs are limited by a short sensing distance due to lower output sound pressure. In this work, a pMUT with a special dual-ring structure based on scandium-doped aluminum nitride (ScAlN) is proposed. The combination of a dual-ring structure with pinned boundary conditions and a high piezoelectric performance ScAlN film allows the pMUT to achieve a large dynamic displacement of 2.87 μm/V and a high electromechanical coupling coefficient (kt2) of 8.92%. The results of ranging experiments show that a single pMUT achieves a distance sensing of 6 m at a resonant frequency of 91 kHz, the farthest distance sensing registered to date. This pMUT provides surprisingly fertile ground for various distance sensing applications.

High electro-mechanical coupling coefficient SAW device with ScAlN on diamond

In this study, Sc concentration dependence of Sc x Al1−x N/AlN/poly-crystalline diamond/Si surface acoustic wave (SAW) characteristics at high Sc from 23.8% to 44.3% was investigated by fabricating one-port SAW resonator at high frequency. 3.8 GHz one-port resonator fabricated on Sc0.43Al0.57N showed an excellent performance of electro-mechanical coupling coefficient (K 2) as high as 6.34% for 2nd mode Sezawa wave, which enables a wide bandwidth in high frequency applications. The temperature coefficient of frequency was approximately −40 to −50 ppm deg−1 for the device fabricated with Sc concentration of 42.9%. This is a smaller value compared to conventional high K2 bulk materials such as LiNbO3. As the result, a high K2 6.34% material system at a higher Sc concentration of ScAlN/AlN/PCD was found to be possible at a high phase velocity of 7000 m s−1. Combined with the extremely high-power durability of diamond based device, high-power durable wideband SAW device at high frequency can be expected.

Wideband Surface Acoustic Wave Filter at 3.7 GHz With Spurious Mode Mitigation

As an essential functional block in radio frequency (RF) front-ends, surface acoustic wave (SAW) filters with large fractional bandwidth (FBW), high center frequency ( <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$f_{c}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> ), and low loss are highly sought-after in 5G new radio (NR). To address this end, 32°Y-X LiNbO3/SiO2/Si heterostructure with high electromechanical coupling coefficient of 23% was constructed, while the propagation characteristics as well as spurious resonance were analyzed through finite element method (FEM) and one-port resonators measurement. It is revealed that by using thin electrodes in the series resonator and thick electrodes in the parallel resonator, spurious modes are successfully eliminated out of the passband. As a result, the SAW filters formed by the above resonators are capable of several superb RF performances: a large bandwidth of 730 MHz (FBW of 19.5%) at <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$f_{c}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> of 3.74 GHz, a small insertion loss (IL) of 3.03 dB, and a flat passband. Furthermore, since our devices were fabricated by standard photolithography process, this work advances commercial implementation of SAW filter in 5G NR.

Three-dimensional porous borocarbonitride composed of pentagonal motifs as a high-performance pyroelectric material.

Pyroelectric materials have been attracting significant attention due to their intrinsic and permanent polarization, where the induced polarization is not associated with specific conditions, such as ferroelectric phase transition, strain gradient, dopants, and electric field. Thus, these materials have great potential for wide applications in energy conversion. Here, we propose a new 3D porous borocarbonitride termed PH-BCN, which is composed of pentagonal motifs with intrinsic polarization along the [0001] direction. Based on first-principles calculations, we show that PH-BCN possesses a record high longitudinal electromechanical coupling coefficient with the value of k33 = 97.99%, a remarkably strong SHG response (χ(2)xzx(0) = χ(2)yzy(0) = χ(2)zxx(0) = χ(2)zyy(0) = -6.23 pm V-1 and χ(2)zzz(0) = 21.21 pm V-1), and a record high shift current value of 908.58 μA V-2 due to the intrinsic vertical polarization. This study expands the family of pentagon-based materials, and may open a new frontier in the design of high-performance pyroelectric materials as well.

Mm-band surface acoustic wave devices utilizing two-dimensional boron nitride

The simple structure, low power consumption, and small form factor have made surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices essential to mobile communication as RF filters. For instance, the latest 5G smartphones are equipped with almost 100 acoustic wave filters to select a specific frequency band and increase communication capacity. On the arrival of the newest communication standard, 5G, mm-band up to 39 GHz is supposed to be utilized, whereas the conventional SAW filters are limited to below 3 GHz, leaving a critical component missing. Here, we show an emerging 2D material—hexagonal boron nitride—can become a key enabler of mm-band SAW filter. Our study, based on first principles analysis and acousto-electric simulation, shows the operating frequency of SAW devices can reach over 20 GHz in its fundamental mode and 40 GHz in its interface mode with high electromechanical coupling coefficient (K2) and low insertion loss. In addition to the orders of magnitude improvement compared to the conventional SAW devices, our study provides a systematic approach to utilizing van der Waals crystals with highly anisotropic acoustic properties for practical applications.

Thin ceramic PZT dual- and multi-frequency pMUT arrays for photoacoustic imaging

Miniaturized ultrasonic transducer arrays with multiple frequencies are key components in endoscopic photoacoustic imaging (PAI) systems to achieve high spatial resolution and large imaging depth for biomedical applications. In this article, we report on the development of ceramic thin-film PZT-based dual- and multi-frequency piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducer (pMUT) arrays and the demonstration of their PAI applications. With chips sized 3.5 mm in length or 10 mm in diameter, square and ring-shaped pMUT arrays incorporating as many as 2520 pMUT elements and multiple frequencies ranging from 1 MHz to 8 MHz were developed for endoscopic PAI applications. Thin ceramic PZT with a thickness of 9 μm was obtained by wafer bonding and chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) techniques and employed as the piezoelectric layer of the pMUT arrays, whose piezoelectric constant d31 was measured to be as high as 140 pm/V. Benefiting from this high piezoelectric constant, the fabricated pMUT arrays exhibited high electromechanical coupling coefficients and large vibration displacements. In addition to electrical, mechanical, and acoustic characterization, PAI experiments with pencil leads embedded into an agar phantom were conducted with the fabricated dual- and multi-frequency pMUT arrays. Photoacoustic signals were successfully detected by pMUT elements with different frequencies and used to reconstruct single and fused photoacoustic images, which clearly demonstrated the advantages of using dual- and multi-frequency pMUT arrays to provide comprehensive photoacoustic images with high spatial resolution and large signal-to-noise ratio simultaneously.

Design and Fabrication of 15-MHz Ultrasonic Transducers Based on a Textured Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-Pb(Zr, Ti)O3 Ceramic.

Ultrasound medical imaging is an entrenched and powerful tool for medical diagnosis. Image quality in ultrasound is mainly dependent on performance of piezoelectric transducer elements, which is further related to the electromechanical performance of the constituent piezoelectric materials. With rising need for piezoelectric materials with better performance and low cost, a highly 〈001〉 textured piezo ceramic, Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-Pb(Zr, Ti)O3, has been developed. Recently, textured ceramic materials can be produced at low cost and exhibit high piezoelectric strain constants and large electromechanical coupling coefficients. In this work, 15-MHz ultrasonic transducers with an effective aperture of 2.5 mm in diameter based on these highly 〈001〉 textured ceramics have been successfully fabricated. The fabricated transducers achieved a central frequency of 15 MHz, a fractional bandwidth of 67% (at -6 dB), a high effective electromechanical coupling coefficient [Formula: see text] of 0.55, and a low insertion loss (IL) of 21 dB. Ex vivo ultrasonic imaging of a porcine eyeball was used to assess the tomography quality of the transducer. The results show that utilized textured ceramic has a great potential in developing ultrasonic devices for biomedical imaging purposes.

Giga-hertz ultrasonic reflectometry for fingerprint imaging using epitaxial PbTiO3 transducers

A fingerprint reader based on epitaxial PbTiO3 (PTO) transducer array operating thickness extensional mode in GHz range was fabricated. The device consisted of nine square transducers with 0.1 mm per side arranged 1.3 mm apart in a 3 × 3 array. Minimum conversion loss of the fabricated transducer was 2.5 dB at 0.8 GHz, and electromechanical coupling coefficient kt2 was estimated to be 28.9%. In contrast to MHz range ultrasonic fingerprint readers such as those based on piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducers using a piezoelectric transducer and ScAlN, a GHz range transducer enables imaging in higher spatial resolution. Furthermore, PTO transducers have a high dielectric constant and electromechanical coupling coefficient kt2. A high dielectric constant realizes 50 Ω impedance matching with small electrode area. The small acoustic source is expected to improve the spatial resolution of a fingerprint reader. We achieved the fingerprint imaging by evaluating the acoustic reflectance of the medium/transducer interface. Furthermore, piezostage that allows mechanical movement in the 100 nm order was introduced to image a 12 × 12 μm2 area with total of 3600 data points.

The vibroacoustic characteristics and regulation rules of Panel–Cavity–Panel System controlled by Piezoelectric Shunt Oscillators with negative capacitors

Piezoelectric Shunt Oscillators (PSOs) are widely used in the passive and semi-active control of the vibration and acoustic radiation of flexible structures, due to PSOs’ high electromechanical coupling coefficients, robustness, effectiveness and adjustability at low frequencies. Panel–Cavity–Panel System (PCPS) is a common type of flexible structures, such as interior panels and windows of automobiles. In this paper, a theoretical model of PCPS controlled by PSOs and its vibration equations are established. The vibroacoustic characteristics of PCPS, including sound absorption coefficient (SAC), energy loss coefficient (ELC) and transmission loss (TL), are calculated using a unified mathematical form based on the vibroacoustic radiation impedance matrix, damping matrix and displacement response of PCPS, while a lumped parameter model of PCPS is derived to simplify the comprehension and extension of PCPS. Then the finite element simulation is used to calculate the vibroacoustic characteristics of the PCPS, which achieves good agreement with theoretical results, while three basic regulation modes are also summarized and verified. The regulation mechanism of PCPS controlled by PSOs is further analyzed by the velocity response of each panel. Finally, experiments of PCPS controlled by PSOs with negative capacitors are conducted in a standing wave tube, at non-eigenfrequencies ranging from 70 Hz to 220 Hz. It is found in experiments that PSOs with negative capacitor can increase the TL of PCPS about 8 dB to 25 dB, which depends on the target frequency. SAC and ELC can also be increased, which means less acoustic energy is reflected and more acoustic energy is dissipated in the shunt circuits.

Design and 3D FEM Analysis of a Flexible Piezoelectric Micromechanical Ultrasonic Transducer Based on Sc-Doped AlN Film.

In this paper, a flexible piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducer (PMUT) based on Scandium (Sc)-doped Aluminum Nitride (AlN) film was designed and modeled by the three-dimensional finite element method (3D-FEM). The resonant frequency of 218.1 kHz was reported. It was noticeable that a high effective electromechanical coupling coefficient (k2eff) of 1.45% was obtained when a combination of a flexible PI and a thin Si layer was used as the PMUT supporting structure layer. Compared with a pure Si supporting layer counterpart, the coupling coefficient had been improved by 110.68%. Additionally, the increase of Sc doping concentration in AlN film further enhanced the device electromechanical coupling coefficient and resulted in an improvement for transmitting/receiving sensitivity of the proposed flexible PMUT. When the doping concentration of Sc reached 30%, the emission sensitivity was as large as 1.721 μm/V, which was 2.86 times greater than that of conventional AlN film-based PMUT. The receiving sensitivity was found to be 2.11 V/KPa, which was as high as 1.23 times the performance of an undoped device. Furthermore, the bending simulation result showed that the proposed flexible PMUT device can maintain a good mechanical stability when the bending radius is greater than 1.5 mm. The simulation of sound field characteristics demonstrated that the flexible PMUT based on AlScN could receive stable sound pressure signals under the bending radius of 1.5 cm.

압전 단결정을 이용한 고감도 광대역 링 트랜스듀서의 수중 음향특성 분석

In this study, the design and underwater acoustic characteristics of a ring transducer composed of a piezoelectric single crystal as the active material was reported. The PIN-PMN-PT piezoelectric single crystals with improved thermal durability have superior piezoelectric performance compared to PZT-4, widely used in underwater acoustic sensors. A 33-mode ring transducer was designed and its acoustic characteristics were estimated through electro-mechanical-acoustic coupled analysis. Furthermore, the acoustic characteristics of the ring transducers, composed of piezoelectric single crystals or PZT-4, were compared. The piezoelectric single crystals ring transducer is expected to have a higher transmitting voltage response (TVR) and receiving voltage sensitivity (RVS) compared to the PZT-4 ring transducer due to a high electro-mechanical coupling coefficient. It is also expected to have wideband performance due to a low mechanical quality factor. The acoustic characteristics of the fabricated piezoelectric single crystals ring transducer were measured and analyzed with the results of the electro-mechanical-acoustic coupled analysis. Upon applying piezoelectric single crystals as active materials, the ring transducer provided high sensitivity and broadband performance.

Effect of Bi3+ and Ti4+ substitution on PbNb2O6 piezoelectric ceramics

In this study, Pb1-2xBi2x(Nb1-xTix)2O6 (PBNTx, x = 0.02–0.08) ceramics with tungsten bronze structure were prepared via the solid-state reaction method. Single orthorhombic ferroelectric phase was detected for all PBNTx ceramics. SEM results indicated fully densified morphology for the samples of x ≥ 0.06. Optimal piezoelectric performance was obtained at the sample of x = 0.08, whose piezoelectric constant (d33) reached to 92 pC/N and Curie temperature (Tc) was up to 593 °C. A notably high electromechanical coupling coefficient (kp) greater than 0.6 was also obtained in this system. The improved piezoelectric performance indicated that Bi3+ and Ti4+ modified PbNb2O6 system is promising for ultrasonic defect detection and transducer applications at high temperatures.

An A0 mode Lamb-wave AlN resonator on SOI substrate with vertically arranged double-electrodes

In this paper, a novel vertically arranged double-electrodes A0 mode Lamb-wave AlN resonator on SOI substrate with a high electromechanical coupling coefficient and high figure of merit (FOM) is reported. The AlN resonator has a sandwich structure with aluminum and N-type doped silicon as electrode layers and a 500 nm thick AlN film as piezoelectric layer. The resonator has only two electrodes vertically arranged rather than horizontal interdigitated (IDT) electrodes which is common in conventional Lamb-wave resonators. The electrode gaps for the vertically arranged double-electrodes resonators are defined by AlN layer thickness rather than by photolithography for lateral field excitation resonators, which results in higher electric field strength and higher electromechanical coupling efficient (). Compared with conventional thickness field excitation (TFE) resonators with floating bottom electrodes, the vertically arranged double-electrodes resonators have higher electric field strength as the potential difference is larger between the top electrode and bottom electrode than that between the IDT electrodes and floating electrode. As a result, a higher electromechanical coupling coefficient is achieved. Furthermore, the resonant frequency of the vertically arranged double-electrodes resonator presented in this work can be defined by photolithography by controlling the width of the silicon layer. The of the vertically arranged double-electrodes resonator calculated from the measurement results of admittance versus frequency by numerically fitting with the Butterworth Van Dyke model shows an increase by 3.85 times, from 0.073% to 0.281% compared with conventional TFE resonators, and the FOM also increases by three times, from 2.66 to 7.99. This work provides a new structure to design future AlN Lamb-wave resonators on SOI substrate.

Nb and Mn Co-Modified Na0.5Bi4.5Ti4O15 Bismuth-Layered Ceramics for High-Frequency Transducer Applications.

Lead-free environmentally friendly piezoelectrical materials with enhanced piezoelectric properties are of great significance for high-resolution ultrasound imaging applications. In this paper, Na0.5Bi4.5Ti3.86Mn0.06Nb0.08O15+y (NBT-Nb-Mn) bismuth-layer-structured ceramics were prepared by solid-phase synthesis. The crystallographic structure, micromorphology, and piezoelectrical and electromechanical properties of NBT-Nb-Mn ceramics were examined, showing their enhanced piezoelectricity (d33 = 33 pC/N) and relatively high electromechanical coupling coefficient (kt = 0.4). The purpose of this article is to describe the development of single element ultrasonic transducers based on these piezoelectric ceramics. The as-prepared high-frequency tightly focused transducer (ƒ-number = 1.13) had an electromechanical coupling coefficient of 0.48. The center frequency was determined to be 37.4 MHz and the −6 dB bandwidth to be 47.2%. According to the B-mode imaging experiment of 25 μm tungsten wires, lateral resolution of the transducer was calculated as 56 μm. Additionally, the experimental results were highly correlated to the results simulated by COMSOL software. By scanning a coin, the imaging effect of the transducer was further evaluated, demonstrating the application advantages of the prepared transducer in the field of high-sensitivity ultrasound imaging.

SAW Resonators and Filters Based on Sc0.43Al0.57N on Single Crystal and Polycrystalline Diamond.

The massive data transfer rates of nowadays mobile communication technologies demand devices not only with outstanding electric performances but with example stability in a wide range of conditions. Surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices provide a high Q-factor and properties inherent to the employed materials: thermal and chemical stability or low propagation losses. SAW resonators and filters based on synthetized by reactive magnetron sputtering on single crystal and polycrystalline diamond substrates were fabricated and evaluated. Our SAW resonators showed high electromechanical coupling coefficients for Rayleigh and Sezawa modes, propagating at 1.2 GHz and 2.3 GHz, respectively. Finally, SAW filters were fabricated on /diamond heterostructures, with working frequencies above 4.7 GHz and ~200 MHz bandwidths, confirming that these devices are promising candidates in developing 5G technology.