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Title: Cold Sintering of PZT 2-2 Composites for High Frequency Ultrasound Transducer Arrays
Medical ultrasound and other devices that require transducer arrays are difficult to manufacture, particularly for high frequency devices (>30 MHz). To enable focusing and beam steering, it is necessary to reduce the center-to-center element spacing to half of the acoustic wavelength. Conventional methodologies prevent co-sintering ceramic–polymer composites due to the low decomposition temperatures of the polymer. Moreover, for ultrasound transducer arrays exceeding 30 MHz, methods such as dice-and-fill cannot provide the dimensional tolerances required. Other techniques in which the ceramic is formed in the green state often fail to retain the required dimensions without distortion on firing the ceramic. This paper explores the use of the cold sintering process to produce dense lead zirconate titanate (PZT) ceramics for application in high frequency transducer arrays. PZT–polymer 2-2 composites were fabricated by cold sintering tape cast PZT with Pb nitrate as a sintering aid and ZnO as the sacrificial layer. PZT beams of 35 μm width with ~5.4 μm kerfs were produced by this technique. The ZnO sacrificial layer was also found to serve as a liquid phase sintering aid that led to grain growth in adjacent PZT. This composite produced resonance frequencies of >17 MHz.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1841453 1841466
NSF-PAR ID:
10309416
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ; ; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Actuators
Volume:
10
Issue:
9
ISSN:
2076-0825
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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