We report on the first successful operation of a cyclic contact scanning force microscope ~SFM! using a self-excited cantilever in liquid. Based on a new structure including a PZT reference pattern and a free-standing PZT cantilever, the piezoelectric self-excitation and self-detection mechanism for a PZT microcantilever was developed successfully. The topography is recorded by measuring the pi...

Utilizing plasmonic nanostructures for efficient and flexible conversion of solar energy into electricity or fuel presents a new paradigm in photovoltaics and photoelectrochemistry research. In a conventional photoelectrochemical cell, consisting of a plasmonic structure in contact with a semiconductor, the type of photoelectrochemical reaction is determined by the band bending at the semicondu...

Pyroelectric harvesters convert time-dependent temperature variations into electric current. The appropriate geometry of the pyroelectric cells, coupled with the optimal period of temperature fluctuations, is key to driving the optimal load resistance, which enhances the performance of pyroelectric harvesters. The induced charge increases when the thickness of the pyroelectric cells decreases. ...

A combination of vertical and lateral piezoresponse force microscopy ~VPFM and LPFM, respectively! has been used to map the out-of-plane and in-plane polarization distribution, respectively, of ~111!-oriented Pb(Zr,Ti)O3-based ~PZT! ferroelectric patterned and reactively-ion-etched capacitors. While VPFM and LPFM have previously been used to determine the orientation of the polarization vector ...

This paper presents a study of lead zirconate titanate (PZT) films hydrothermally grown on a dome-shaped titanium diaphragm. Few articles in the literature address the implementation of hydrothermal PZT films on curved-diaphragm substrates for resonators. In this study, a 50-μm-thick titanium sheet is embossed using balls of designed dimensions to shape a dome-shaped cavity array. Through singl...

Lead zirconate titanate (PZT) nanofibers are obtained by electrospinning a sol–gel based solution and polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) polymer, and by subsequent sintering of the electrospun precursor fibers. The average diameter of the precursor PZT/ PVP green fibers has increased with the aging of the precursor solution along with an increase in the viscosity. Bead-free uniform green PZT/PVP fiber...

Processing effects on the dielectric properties of sol–gel-derived PbZrO3–PbTiO3 (PZT) films integrated onto Pt/Ti/SiO2//Si substrates are reported. Sol–gel synthesis and deposition conditions were designed to produce films of varying thickness (95–500 nm) with consistent chemical composition (Pb (Zr0.53Ti0.47)O3), phase content (perovskite), grain size (B110 nm), crystallographic orientation (...

Multilayer thin-film PZT diaphragm has been designed and modeled. Commercial Finite element software, ANSYS was implemented to model the diaphragm. This multi-layer diaphragm can be used as both sensor and actuator. A simplified model is introduced to reduce the CPU time. Dynamic characteristics of the multilayer diaphragm have been investigated. The important parameters of the multilayer PZT d...

We report efficient acousto-optic control of speckle contrast at the output of multimode fibers (MMFs) using a cylindrical piezoelectric transducer (PZT) vibrating in the radial direction. With appropriate packaging of an MMF around the PZT, periodic stretching and subsequent intensity modulation were achieved over the wound fiber to result in time-averaged smoothing of the output within a shor...

Typically, the Electromechanical Impedance (EMI) technique does not use an analytical model for basic damage identification. However, an accurate model is necessary for getting more information about any damage. In this paper, an EMI model is presented for predicting the electromechanical impedance of a cracked beam structure quantitatively. A coupled system of a cracked Timoshenko beam with a ...