3D Printing of BaTiO3 Piezoelectric Ceramics for a Focused Ultrasonic Array

Jian Cheng; Yan Chen; Jun-Wei Wu; Xuan-Rong Ji; Shang-Hua Wu

doi:10.3390/s19194078

3D Printing of BaTiO₃ Piezoelectric Ceramics for a Focused Ultrasonic Array

Sensors (Basel). 2019 Sep 20;19(19):4078. doi: 10.3390/s19194078.

Authors

Jian Cheng¹, Yan Chen², Jun-Wei Wu³, Xuan-Rong Ji⁴, Shang-Hua Wu⁵

Affiliations

¹ School of Electromechanical Engineering, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China. jiancheng0372@foxmail.com.
² School of Electromechanical Engineering, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China. yanchen@gdut.edu.cn.
³ School of Electromechanical Engineering, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China. wujunwei@cndoppler.cn.
⁴ School of Electromechanical Engineering, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China. xr.ji@gdut.edu.cn.
⁵ School of Electromechanical Engineering, Guangdong University of Technology, Guangzhou 510006, China. swu@gdut.edu.cn.

Abstract

BaTiO₃ (BTO) ceramics were fabricated based on stereolithography technology. The microstructures and electric properties of the BTO ceramics were studied. X-ray patterns of sintered BTO ceramics indicated that the tetragonal phase had formed, and the grain size increased clearly as BTO weight percentage increased. Moreover, the BTO ceramics exhibited good electric properties, with a piezoelectric constant d₃₃ of 166 pC/N at 80% BTO weight percentage. To evaluate the properties of 3D printed BTO ceramics, a 1.4 MHz focused ultrasonic array was fabricated and characterized. The -6dB bandwidth of the array was 40%, and the insertion loss at the center frequency was 50 dB. The results show that the printed BTO ceramics array have good potential to be used in ultrasonic transducers for various applications.

Keywords: BTO; piezoelectric ceramic; stereolithography; ultrasonic transducer.