The relaxor–PbTiO3 single crystal has attracted extensive attention in ultrasound transducers, sensors, actuators, and optoelectronics devices due to its excellent piezoelectric response and electro–optic properties. Preparation of a single–domain crystal as a critical process for application in electro–optic and non–linear optical devices suffers from serious and inevitable cracking. Therefore, a pre-poling thermal annealing process was suggested to release residual stress from crystal growth and the ferroelectric–paraelectric phase transition, which significantly reduced the chance of cracking. The effect of thermal annealing on dielectric properties, strain behavior, and domain structure were investigated. As a result, a significant increase of the dielectric constant near room temperature was obtained after annealing, which is close to the dielectric constant of the a-oriented domain. The annealed single crystal showed a lower and sharper strain peak at the coercive electric field compared with the unannealed sample, and the 90° domain walls completely vanished, which was verified by optical microscopy. The crack–free single–domain crystal showed excellent optical quality, with high transmittance of approximately 70% in the visible and near–infrared regions, which indicates that this crystal is a promising candidate for applications in electro–optic and non–linear optical devices.

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The cantilever split-morph, a new type of piezoelectric actuator, have been designed for dual-stage head positioning servo system of high density hard disk drives. In this actuator configuration, a PZT ceramic plate, with one end mechanically clamped and the other free, was poled along its thickness and divided into two symmetric parts along length by splitting electrodes. Driving voltages are preferably so arranged that they make one of the two parts expand by the “31”action while the other part, i.e., the symmetric part, contracts. This will result in a bending motion of the actuator along the direction of its width. The driving voltage-tip displacement characteristics of the actuator have been investigated by theoretical analysis, finite element modeling and experiment. Theoretical analysis indicated that the electric field induced stress is much smaller than stretch strength of piezoelectric ceramic. Tip displacement measured by Michelson interferometer is a little larger than the calculated result. This is mainly due to the increase of piezoelectric coefficient d31 at high driving field. Tip displacement of 1 to 2μm can be achieved at 20 to 50V driving voltage for the split-morph whose size is similar to that of the existing suspension. As to 25 kTPI (track per inch) high track density hard disk drives, this actuating stroke can cover at least one track width and meet the primary requirements of dual-stage head positioning servo system for displacement of the secondary actuator.

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