Lightweight piezoelectric polymer hydrophones

Reciprocity failure in piezoelectric polymer composite

Reciprocity principles, which entail equivalent outcome on exchange of cause and effect, are widely used and accepted. We present a piezoelectric composite system designed so that reciprocity does not hold; sensitivity is substantially enhanced. Reciprocity failure is observed in which the piezoelectric direct effect (stress causes polarization) sensitivity dkij is unequal to the converse effec...

Piezoelectric Biopolymer–Polymer Composite Films and Microfibers

258 is one where the piezoactivity and mechanical properties can be altered individually so that the mechanical stiffness of the material can be controlled for particular applications or tuned to match that of the surroundings (e.g., air or water) for increased transduction sensitivity. Here, we present a new piezoelectric material based on a helical biopolymer with an inherently large electric...

Broad-band Ceramic-polymer Piezoelectric Composites

Constitutive Modeling of Piezoelectric Polymer Composites

A new modeling approach is proposed for predicting the bulk electromechanical properties of piezoelectric composites. The proposed model offers the same level of convenience as the wellknown Mori-Tanaka method. The electromechanical properties of four piezoelectric polymer composite materials are predicted with the proposed, Mori-Tanaka, Self-consistent methods, and detailed finite element anal...

Plasmonic nanoantenna hydrophones

Ultrasound is a valuable biomedical imaging modality and diagnostic tool. Here we theoretically demonstrate that a single dipole plasmonic nanoantenna can be used as an optical hydrophone for MHz-range ultrasound. The nanoantenna is tuned to operate on a high-order plasmon mode, which provides an increased sensitivity to ultrasound in contrast to the usual approach of using the fundamental dipo...