Experimental Analysis of 1-3 Piezocomposites for High-Intensity Focused Ultrasound Transducer Applications

Abstract

Piezocomposites with 1-3 connectivity have been extensively used in medical imaging transducers and high-intensity focused ultrasound transducers, but most studies of 1-3 piezocomposites address medical imaging applications. The purpose of this study was to completely investigate 1-3 composites specifically for high-power ultrasonic transducer applications via a series of experimental analyses. PZT4-epoxy composite focused transducers with various aspect ratios and volume fractions were constructed in-house for the evaluation of the coupling factor, dielectric loss tangent, quality factor, bandwidth, acoustic impedance, and electroacoustic efficiency. The experimental analyses demonstrated that although the coupling factor of composite transducers was higher than that of the ceramic transducer, the composite transducers had a lower efficiency due to the high dielectric loss and high mechanical energy loss of the composites. In addition, the bandwidth and acoustic impedance of composite transducers were superior to the ceramic transducer. For the composite transducers, the efficiency and acoustic impedance were inversely proportional to the aspect ratio and linearly proportional to the volume fraction. The coupling of inter pillars that are too close to each other could cause a significant decrease in the efficiency of the composite transducer. With an appropriate design in terms of the aspect ratio, volume fraction, and PZT-pillar spacing, a high-efficiency composite high-intensity focused ultrasound transducer can be achieved.

Temperature-Dependent Properties of a 1–3 Connectivity Piezoelectric Ceramic–Polymer Composite

“…1-3 connectivity piezoelectric ceramic-polymer composites have been widely used for piezoelectric transducers in many fields, such as hydrophones for low-frequency (Zhang et al 1993), ultrasonic transducers (Chen et al 2013), non-destructive testing for high frequency (Kirk and Schmarje 2013) and so on. Comparing with monolithic 0.90Pb(Zr 0.52 Ti 0.48 )O 3 (PZT) ceramics, the 1-3 composites show advantages of higher piezoelectric constants g h , higher value of k t , flexible processing in manufacturing, and relatively low impendence Z which leads to better material performance in matching with human tissue and water (Dyaz and Castillero 2001;Wang et al 2008).…”

Radial artery blood flow velocity monitoring based on continuous-wave Doppler and flexible ultrasonic transducer

“…Piezoelectric composites are composed of piezoelectric materials and polymers according to a certain connection mode, a certain volume or mass ratio, and a certain spatial geometric distribution [11]. Compared with piezoelectric ceramics, piezoelectric composites have the characteristics of low density, impedance, low mechanical quality factor and high flexibility.…”

Review on Triggered Liposomal Drug Delivery with a Focus on Ultrasound

“…Lower intensities cannot achieve the required increase in temperature. Thus, although the frequency ranges overlap, the application is determined by the intensity [173,179,[182][183][184][185][186][187][188][189].…”