Lead-free piezoelectric ceramics and transducers in potassium sodium niobate-solid solution system

Lead-free piezoelectric ceramic of (K0.44Na0.52Li 0.04)(Nb0.84Ta0.1Sb0.06)O 3; (KNN-LT-LS) was prepared by two processing routes, namely "Perovskite" and "Mixed oxide". The sensitivity of raw materials to relative humidity of laboratory environment indicated that the powders batching/handling had to be carried out in a controlled atmosphere (e.g. Ar). The electromechanical properties of bulk samples in which batching carried out in Ar atmosphere were significantly higher than those ceramics prepared in the laboratory environment. The electromechanical properties of ceramics were also very sensitive to the oxygen flow rate during sintering. It was realized that oxygen vacancies could be formed in low oxygen flow rate and deteriorate piezoelectric properties of such ceramics. Reduction in oxygen vacancies facilitated domain wall switching and led to higher remnant polarization with lower coercive field. The highest longitudinal coupling (k33) and piezoelectric charge (d33 ) coefficients for perovskite routes at optimized oxygen flow rate of 180cm3/min were 65% and 315pC/N, respectively.; The substitution of Ba2+ (0, 0.5, 1, 1.5, and 2 mol%) ion as an A-site donor dopant to this system improved the relative permittivity, longitudinal coupling and piezoelectric charge coefficients. Increase in remnant polarization along with the decline of coercive field indicated that the addition of Ba2+ gave rise to soft characteristics in this ternary system. The effect of 0-2 mol% of copper oxide (CuO) addition to the base composition was increased the grain size and changed the morphology and growth behavior of the grains. Mechanical quality factor was remarkably improved (Qm = 350) upon addition of 2 mol% Cu2+ with dramatic decrease in amount of energy for switching the dipole moments.; Single element air-backed transducers made of undoped and 1.0 mol% Ba 2+-KNN-LT-LS, and PZT-4 showed a measured -6dB fractional bandwidth of 36%, 50.4%, and 53.5%, respectively. High frequency lead-free transducer of KNN-LT-LS were also fabricated that showed the fractional bandwidth (-6dB) of 55.3% at center frequency of 23.5 MHz. This close acoustic performance of studied lead-free transducer in regards to PZT-4 transducer showed that the lead-free system could be a good candidate used for imaging and HIFU (High Focused Ultrasound) therapeutic applications.