Relaxor-PbTiO3 piezoelectric single crystals have been widely used in a broad range of electromechanical devices, including piezoelectric sensors, actuators, and transducers. This paper reviews the unique properties of these single crystals for piezoelectric sensors. Design, fabrication and characterization of various relaxor-PT single crystal piezoelectric sensors and their applications are pr...

The piezoelectric effect of biological piezoelectric materials promotes bone growth. However, the material should be subjected to stress before it can produce an electric charge that promotes bone repair and reconstruction conducive to fracture healing. A novel method for in vitro experimentation of biological piezoelectric materials with physiological load is presented. A dynamic loading devic...

The piezoelectric properties of [001](c) poled 0.94Pb(Zn(13)Nb(23))O(3)-0.06PbTiO(3) single crystals were greatly enhanced by controlling their domain configurations. Contrary to the interpretation of charged domain walls being the main contributor to the piezoelectric enhancement, we found that smaller domain size and more neutral domain walls were the main contributors for the piezoelectric e...

A piezoelectric domain wall model has been developed to analyze the effective piezoelectric properties of domain engineered BaTiO(3) (BT) single crystals with different volume fractions of 90 degrees domain walls. The model takes into account the nonuniform deformation in the domain wall region, which can create additional anisotropy to enhanced functional properties of multidomain single cryst...

ZrO2 and TiO2 modified lead-free (K0.5Na0.5)NbO3 (KNN) piezoelectric ceramics are prepared by conventional solid-state reaction. The effect of acceptor doping on structural and functional properties are investigated. A decrease in the Curie temperature and an increase in the dielectric constant values are observed when doping. More interestingly, an increase in the coercive field Ec and remanen...

The purpose of this review is to detail the current theoretical understanding of the origin of piezoelectric and ferroelectric phenomena in polymers; to present the state-of-the-art in piezoelectric polymers and emerging material systems that exhibit promising properties; and to discuss key characterization methods, fundamental modeling approaches, and applications of piezoelectric polymers. Pi...

Calcium yttrium aluminate (CaYAl3O7) crystal was grown and characterized in detail for high temperature piezoelectric sensors for the first time. The thermal properties of the CaYAl3O7 (CYAM) crystal were investigated systematically. In particular, the CYAM crystal exhibits considerably high resistivity along Xand Zdirection in the order of 6.96 × 107 Ω·cm and 2.86 × 108 Ω·cm at 600 ◦C, respect...

Piezoelectric materials characterization is a challenging problem involving physical concepts, electrical and mechanical measurements and numerical optimization techniques. Piezoelectric ceramics such as Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT) belong to the 6 mm symmetry class, which requires five elastic, three piezoelectric and two dielectric constants to fully represent the material properties. If los...

While commonly used piezoelectric materials contain lead, non-hazardous, high-performance piezoelectrics are yet to be discovered. Charged domain walls in ferroelectrics are considered inactive with regards to the piezoelectric response and, therefore, are largely ignored in this search. Here we demonstrate a mechanism that leads to a strong enhancement of the dielectric and piezoelectric prope...