Thickness mode piezoelectric micro-electromechanical system (MEMS) ultrasound transducers, operating in the 50-75 MHz range, have been fabricated using a composite sol gel technique in combination with wet etching. The composite sol gel technique involves producing a PZT powder/sol composite slurry, which when spun down yields films a few micrometers thick. Repeated layering, and infiltration, ...

We have developed a method of forming PZT films on silicon substrates with a high piezoelectric coefficient using RF sputtering. Films have been formed on 6-inch wafers with thickness variation of less than +/− 5% across the entire wafer. Our PZT film has an unusually high content of Nb dopant (13%) which results in 1.7-fold higher piezoelectric coefficient than sputtered PZT films previously r...

This paper presents the microfabrication of an acoustic impedance gradient matching layer on a spherically-shaped piezoelectric ultrasonic transducer. The acoustic matching layer can be designed to achieve higher acoustic energy transmission and operating bandwidth. Also included in this paper are a theoretical analysis of the device design and a micromachining technique to produce the novel tr...

In this report, ordered lead zirconate titanate Pb(Zr0.52Ti0.48)O3 (PZT) nanodot arrays were fabricated by an original one-step mask etching route. The one-step mask etching strategy is based on the patterned nanostructure of barrier layer (BL) at the bottom of anodic aluminum oxide (AAO), by a direct transfer of the nanopattern from BL to the pre-deposited PZT film, without introduction of any...

The evolution of stored ferroelectric polarization in PZT thin film capacitors was imaged using synchrotron x-ray microdiffraction with a submicron-diameter focused incident x-ray beam. To form the capacitors, an epitaxial Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 (PZT) thin film was deposited on an epitaxiallygrown conductive SrRuO3 (SRO) bottom electrode on a SrTiO3 (STO) (001) substrate. Polycrystalline SRO or Pt top ele...

To effectively harvest vibration energy from pavement without affecting driving comfort and safety, parameter optimization was done with the orthogonal experiment design and the finite element analysis. L16(44) Taguchi’s orthogonal experiments were carried out with planted depth, PZT material, PZT diameter and thickness as optimization parameters and with open voltage and pavement displacement ...

In this paper, we develop nonlinear constitutive equations and resulting system models quantifying the nonlinear and hysteretic field-displacement relations inherent to lead zirconate titanate (PZT) devices employed in atomic force microscope stage mechanisms. We focus specifically on PZT rods utilizing d33 motion and PZT shells driven in d31 regimes, but the modeling framework is sufficiently ...

This paper discusses the selection process for piezoelectric transducers (PZT) used as actuator elements for suppressing vibrations in a flexible beam system. The effects of changing physical parameters such as the relative thickness of the piezoelectric ceramic with respect to the beam, the optimum location of the PZT actuator, and the length of the PZT are studied based on the singular value ...