lead-magnesium-niobate and lead-titanate

An ultrasonic microcutter is an alternative approach to conventional ultrasonic instruments actuated by sandwich piezoelectric transducers for surgery. This paper reports high-power behavior of a microcutter actuated by the piezocrystal lead magnesium niobate-lead titanate (PMN-PT), defining its practical performance and the feasibility of PMNPT actuation for surgical applications. The microcutter was driven at resonance with constant current amplitudes, either unloaded or loaded by poultry breast tissue, until its behavior achieved a steady state. During this driving process, its electric impedance, resonant frequency, and vibration velocity, along with the temperature increase of the PMN-PT, were recorded in real time. The microcutter produced a maximum vibration velocity >2.8 m/s with an excitation current of 0.11 A(rms). The mechanical loss increased significantly with current amplitude, resulting in a maximum temperature increase approaching 50°C around the interface between the PMN-PT and the blade, where they were bonded together with epoxy. Because of the low phase-transition temperature of PMN-PT, this temperature rise prevented the microcutter from working at higher current amplitudes. Along with the high vibration velocity, it also caused a frequency shift downward by 3 kHz at the same current amplitude. During tests with poultry breast tissue, radiation reactance increased the resonant frequency and the radiation resistance increased the loss of the microcutter. However, the loss did not further increase the temperature of the piezoelectric material. The maximum force and the overall work required to penetrate the microcutter into poultry breast tissue were reduced by 47.1 ± 8% and 53.5 ± 6%, respectively, when the microcutter was actuated at a current of 0.07 A(rms).

Topics: Animals; Chickens; Equipment Design; Lead; Models, Biological; Muscle, Skeletal; Niobium; Oxides; Titanium; Ultrasonic Surgical Procedures

A flexible single-crystalline PMN-PT piezoelectric energy harvester is demonstrated to achieve a self-powered artificial cardiac pacemaker. The energy-harvesting device generates a short-circuit current of 0.223 mA and an open-circuit voltage of 8.2 V, which are enough not only to meet the standard for charging commercial batteries but also for stimulating the heart without an external power source.

Topics: Crystallization; Elastic Modulus; Electric Power Supplies; Energy Transfer; Equipment Design; Equipment Failure Analysis; Lead; Materials Testing; Micro-Electrical-Mechanical Systems; Niobium; Oxides; Pacemaker, Artificial; Prostheses and Implants; Titanium

This paper reports the design, fabrication, and characterization of a miniature high-frequency kerfless phased array prepared from a PMN-PT single crystal for forward-looking intravascular or endoscopic imaging applications. After lapping down to around 40 μm, the PMN-PT material was utilized to fabricate 32-element kerfless phased arrays using micromachining techniques. The aperture size of the active area was only 1.0 × 1.0 mm. The measured results showed that the array had a center frequency of 40 MHz, a bandwidth of 34% at -6 dB with a polymer matching layer, and an insertion loss of 20 dB at the center frequency. Phantom images were acquired and compared with simulated images. The results suggest that the feasibility of developing a phased array mounted at the tip of a forward-looking intravascular catheter or endoscope. The fabricated array exhibits much higher sensitivity than PZT ceramic-based arrays and demonstrates that PMN-PT is well suited for this application.

Topics: Crystallization; Endosonography; Equipment Design; Equipment Failure Analysis; Lead; Micro-Electrical-Mechanical Systems; Microarray Analysis; Niobium; Oxides; Phantoms, Imaging; Reproducibility of Results; Sensitivity and Specificity; Titanium; Transducers; Ultrasonography; Ultrasonography, Interventional

In this paper, a bio-inspired bending actuator was designed and fabricated using piezoelectric patches and cantilever-shaped beam for controlling nose shape. The aim of this study is to investigate the use of the bending actuator. PZT and single crystal PMN-PT actuators were used to generate translational strain and shear stress. The piezoelectric patches were attached on the clamped cantilever beam to convert their translational strains to bending motion of the beam. First, finite element analysis was performed to identify and to make an accurate estimate of the feasibility on the bending actuation by applying various voltages and frequencies. Based on the results of the FEM analysis, the experiments were also performed. Static voltages and dynamic voltages with various frequencies were applied to the bending actuators with PZTs and PMN-PTs, and the rotation angles of the nose connected to the top of bending actuators were measured, respectively. As the results, the bending actuator using PMN-PT patches showed better performances in all cases. With the increases of signal frequency and input voltage, the rotation angle also found to be increased. Especially at the frequency of 5 Hz and input voltage of 600 V, the nose generated the maximum rotation angle of 3.15 degree.

Topics: Biomimetics; Equipment Design; Lead; Micro-Electrical-Mechanical Systems; Niobium; Oxides; Titanium

The development of a piezoelectric hydrophone based on lead magnesium niobate-lead titanate [PbMg1/3Nb2/3O3-PbTiO3 (PMN-PT)] single-crystal piezoelectric as the hydrophone substrate is reported. Although PMN-PT can possess much higher piezoelectric sensitivity than traditional lead zirconate titanate (PZT) piezoelectrics, it is highly anisotropic and therefore there is a large gain in sensitivity only when the crystal structure is oriented in a specific direction. Because of this, simply replacing the PZT substrate with a PMN-PT cylinder is not an optimal solution because the crystal orientation does not uniformly align with the circumferential axis of the hydrophone. Therefore, a composite hydrophone that maintains the optimal crystal axis around the hydrophone circumference has been developed. An 11.3 mm diameter composite hydrophone cylinder was fabricated from a single <110> cut PMN-PT rectangular plate. Solid end caps were applied to the cylinder and the sensitivity was directly compared with a solid PZT-5A cylindrical hydrophone of equal dimensions in a hydrophone test tank. The charge sensitivity showed a 9.1 dB improvement over the PZT hydrophone and the voltage sensitivity showed a 3.5 dB improvement. This was in good agreement with the expected theoretical improvements of 10.1 and 4.5 dB, respectively.

Topics: Computer Simulation; Crystallization; Equipment Design; Lead; Materials Testing; Models, Theoretical; Motion; Niobium; Numerical Analysis, Computer-Assisted; Oxides; Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; Sound; Sound Spectrography; Time Factors; Titanium; Transducers, Pressure; Ultrasonics; Water

Piezoelectric single crystal materials such as (x)Pb(Mg(1/3)Nb(2/3))O(3-)(1-x)PbTiO(3) (PMN-PT) have, by some measures, significantly better performance than established piezoelectric ceramics for ultrasound applications. However, they are also subject to phase transitions affecting their behavior at temperatures and pressures encountered in underwater sonar and actuator applications and in non-destructive testing at elevated temperatures. Materials with modified compositions to reduce these problems are now under development, but application-oriented characterization techniques need further attention. Characterization with temperature variation has been reported extensively, but the range of parameters measured is often limited and the effects of pressure variation have received almost no attention. Furthermore, variation in properties between samples is now rarely reported. The focus of this paper is an experimental system set up with commercially available equipment and software to carry out characterization of piezoelectric single crystals with variation in temperature, pressure, and electrical bias fields found in typical practical use. We illustrate its use with data from bulk thickness-mode PMN-29%PT samples, demonstrating variation among nominally identical samples and showing not only the commonly reported changes in permittivity with temperature for bulk material but also significant and complicated changes with pressure and bias field and additional ultrasonic modes which are attributed to material phase changes. The insight this provides may allow the transducer engineer to accelerate new material adoption in devices.

Topics: Dielectric Spectroscopy; Electric Impedance; Electricity; Lead; Niobium; Oxides; Pressure; Temperature; Titanium; Transducers; Ultrasonography

Materials based on relaxor ferroelectrics have become one of the most important families of functional materials being explored for such applications as sensors/actuators, micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS), non-volatile random access memories, and high-energy-density capacitors. Fabrication of high-quality relaxor-based ceramics remains, however, a challenging task. In this work, a new soft chemical synthetic method for the preparation of the complex perovskite-based relaxor ferroelectric solid solutions, (1-x)Pb(Mg(1/3)Nb(2/3))O(3)-xPbTiO(3) was developed using ethylene glycol as the solvent. Ceramics with compositions of x = 0.07 and 0.10 were prepared and it was found that a 10% stoichiometric excess of Pb(2+) was required to compensate for lead oxide volatility at the high temperatures used for sintering. The ceramics produced by this method show excellent dielectric properties at room temperature, such as a high dielectric constant (~20 000) and low loss over a large temperatures range (tan δ < 0.01 between 20 and 200°C). The temperature dependence of the dielectric constant exhibits typical relaxor ferroelectric behavior, fitting a quadratic law which describes the high-temperature slope of ε'(T) peak. The frequency dispersion of the temperature of maximum permittivity satisfies the Vogel-Fulcher law.

Topics: Calcium Compounds; Ceramics; Chemical Phenomena; Electromagnetic Fields; Ethylene Glycol; Hot Temperature; Lead; Micro-Electrical-Mechanical Systems; Niobium; Oxides; Titanium; X-Ray Diffraction

We have investigated rapid, label free detection of white spot syndrome virus (WSSV) using the first longitudinal extension resonance peak of five lead-magnesium niobate-lead titanate (PMN-PT) piezoelectric microcantilever sensors (PEMS) 1050-700 μm long and 850-485 μm wide constructed from 8 μm thick PMN-PT freestanding films. The PMN-PT PEMS were encapsulated with a 3-mercaptopropyltrimethoxysilane (MPS) insulation layer and further coated with anti-VP28 and anti-VP664 antibodies to target the WSSV virions and nucleocapsids, respectively. By inserting the antibody coated PEMS in a flowing virion or nucleocapsid suspension, label free detection of the virions and nucleocapsids were respectively achieved by monitoring the PEMS resonance frequency shift. We showed that positive label free detection of both the virion and the nucleocapsid could be achieved at a concentration of 100virions(nucleocapsids)/ml or 10 virions(nucleocapsids)/100 μl, comparable to the detection sensitivity of polymerase chain reaction (PCR). However, in contrast to PCR, PEMS detection was label free, in situ and rapid (less than 30 min), potentially requiring minimal or no sample preparation.

Topics: Animals; Antibodies, Viral; Biosensing Techniques; Equipment Design; Lead; Niobium; Nucleocapsid; Oxides; Polymerase Chain Reaction; Titanium; Virion; White spot syndrome virus 1

A voltage-controlled birefringent cell based on ceramic PMN-PT material is used to enable fast intensity modulation of femtosecond laser pulses in the 800 nm wavelength window. The birefringent cell based on a PMN-PT compound has comparatively high electro-optic response, allowing for a short interaction length of 3 mm and thus very small size, low attenuation of 0.16 dB, and negligible broadening for 100 fs optical pulses. As an application example, agile wavelength tuning of optical pulses is demonstrated using the soliton self-frequency shift in a photonic crystal fiber. By dynamically controlling the optical power into the fiber, this system switches the wavelength of 100 fs pulses from 900 nm to beyond 1120 nm with less than 5 micros time. In addition, a feedback system stabilizes the wavelength drift against external conditions resulting in high wavelength stability.

Topics: Ceramics; Computer-Aided Design; Equipment Design; Equipment Failure Analysis; Lasers; Lead; Nanotechnology; Niobium; Oxides; Reproducibility of Results; Sensitivity and Specificity; Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; Telecommunications; Titanium

High frequency ultrasound over 40 MHz has been used to image the anterior segment of the eye, but it is not suitable for the posterior segment due to the frequency dependent attenuation of ultrasound and thus the limitation of penetration depth. This paper proposes a novel scan method to image the posterior segment of the eye with an angled high frequency (beyond 40 MHz) ultrasound needle transducer. In this method, the needle transducer is inserted into the eye through a small incision hole (approximately 1 mm in diameter) and rotated around the axial direction to form a cone-shaped imaging plane, allowing the spatial information of retinal vessels and diagnosis of their occlusion to be displayed. The feasibility of this novel technique was tested with images of a wire phantom, a polyimide tube, and an excised pig eye obtained by manually rotating a 40-MHz PMN-PT needle transducer with a beveled tip of 45 degrees . From the results, we believe that rotational scan imaging will help expand the minimally invasive applications of high frequency ultrasound to other areas due to the capability of increased closeness of an angled needle transducer to structures of interest buried in other tissues.

Topics: Animals; Blood Flow Velocity; Eye; Lead; Niobium; Oxides; Retinal Vessels; Swine; Titanium; Transducers; Ultrasonography

We present electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR)--evidence of photomagnetism under the conditions of in situ green laser illumination (photo-EPR) in lead magnesium niobate-lead titanate, Pb(Mg,Nb)O3-PbTiO3 (PMN-PT), containing nanoparticles/wires of orthorhombic beta-PbO as identified by Raman spectroscopy. Photo-EPR studies of the sample containing beta-PbO, brownish red in color, have shown intense line at g=2.00, and its yield increased when produced in the presence of 7.5 kG external magnetic field suggesting the formation of magnetic polaron. This was identified as due to interaction between Fe3+, photoinduced Pb3+ and unpaired electron trapped at oxygen vacancies. The photoinduced growth and decay of magnetic polaron has shown a non-exponential behavior. Photoluminescence (PL) studies were conducted with excitation at 308 nm (XeCl laser) and also at 454.5, 488 and 514.5 nm using Ar+ laser. The excitation with 308 nm gave broad PL centered at 500 and 710 nm the latter being quite prominent in beta-PbO containing crystals, along with cooperative luminescence at 350 nm involving two emitting centers. The excitation with Ar+ laser lines, close to the electronic absorption in samples containing beta-PbO gave richer and sharp PL emission in red region from the constituents of the magnetic polaron and also intense anti-Stokes emission on excitation with 514.5 nm radiation. This appears to be due to phototransfer optically stimulated luminescence (PT-OSL) involving electron-hole recombination at photoinduced magnetic polaron site.

Topics: Argon; Crystallization; Electromagnetic Fields; Electron Spin Resonance Spectroscopy; Iron; Lead; Light; Magnetics; Nanoparticles; Nanotechnology; Niobium; Oxides; Oxygen; Spectrum Analysis, Raman; Titanium