Pb(Zr0.52Ti0.48)O3 (PZT) films with (001) orientation were deposited on Pt(111)/Ti/SiO2/Si(100) substrates using pulsed laser deposition. Variation of the laser pulse rate during the deposition of the PZT films was found to play a key role in the control of the microstructure and to change strongly the piezoelectric response of the thin film. The film deposited at low pulse rate has a denser co...

This paper reports the effect of the different deposition methods towards the ZnO nanostructure crystal quality and film thickness on the polyimide substrate. The ZnO film has been deposited by using the spray pyrolysis technique, sol-gel and RF Sputtering. Different methods give a different nanostructure of the ZnO thin film. Sol gel methods, results of nanoflowers ZnO thin film with the thick...

Both ZnO and PZT Thin Film Bulk Acoustic Resonator filters were fabricated, tested and modeled in this study. The development of an accurate Mason model allows the effect of particular parasitic components on the microwave s-parameters in the region of the series and parallel resonances to be identified. The parasitic components that limit the performance of our ZnO and PbZr0.3Ti0.7O3 Thin Film...

Structural health monitoring (SHM) is an emerging field in which smart materials interrogate structural components to predict failure, expedite needed repairs, and thus increase the useful life of those components. Piezoelectric wafer active sensors (PWAS) have been previously adhesively-bonded to structures and demonstrate the ability to detect and locate cracking, corrosion, and disbonding th...

In this study, we fabricated piezoelectric energy harvesters composed of lead-free (K,Na)NbO3 (KNN) thin films and compared the power generation performance with PZT-thin film energy harvesters. Both of the piezoelectric thin films were deposited on Pt/Ti/Si cantilevers by rf-sputtering. The KNN and PZT thin films had perovskite structure, and showed the relative dielectric constants of 744 and...

Lead zirconate titanate ~PZT! thin films with a Zr/Ti ratio of 52/48 were deposited on platinized silicon substrates by a sol-gel method and crystallized with preferred ~111! or ~100! orientation. Both the piezoelectric properties (d33) and the field-induced strains of the films with different thickness and preferred orientation were measured by a laser Doppler heterodyne interferometer. The we...

Parallel-plate capacitors based on ferroelectric thin films are considered as high density capacitors and varactors. Due to the small thickness of the ferroelectric films, typically less than 1.0 μm, high electric fields are generated even at relatively low voltages inducing piezoelectric effect associated with electrostriction. This induced piezoelectric effect has negative impact on ferroelec...

Series-connected thin film piezoelectric elements can generate large output voltages. The output voltage ideally is proportional to the number of connections. However, parasitic capacitances formed by the insulation layers and derived from peripheral circuitry degrade the output voltage. Conventional circuit models are not suitable for predicting the influence of the parasitic capacitance. Ther...

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The ability to measure pressure and force is essential in biomedical applications such as minimally invasive surgery (MIS) and palpation for detecting cancer cysts. Here, we report a force sensor for measuring a shear and normal force by combining an arrayed piezoelectric sensors layer with a precut glass top plate connected by four stress concentrating legs. We designed and fabricated a thin f...