Radiation-Hardened and Flexible Pb(Zr0.53Ti0.47)O3 Piezoelectric Sensor for Structural Health Monitoring

Yajing Liu; Chao Yun; Yu Wang; Longjie Xu; Chongqi Wang; Zhongxu Li; Miao Meng; Sijia Song; Kaifeng Li; Dong Li; Feng Chen; Yang Liu; Yanda Ji; Tiangui You; Shuai Ning; Lei Qiu; Hao Yang; Weiwei Li

doi:10.1021/acsami.3c10885

Radiation-Hardened and Flexible Pb(Zr_0.53Ti_0.47)O₃ Piezoelectric Sensor for Structural Health Monitoring

ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2023 Oct 25;15(42):49362-49369. doi: 10.1021/acsami.3c10885. Epub 2023 Oct 12.

Authors

Yajing Liu¹, Chao Yun¹, Yu Wang², Longjie Xu¹, Chongqi Wang², Zhongxu Li³, Miao Meng⁴, Sijia Song¹, Kaifeng Li¹, Dong Li¹, Feng Chen¹, Yang Liu¹, Yanda Ji¹, Tiangui You³, Shuai Ning⁴, Lei Qiu², Hao Yang¹, Weiwei Li¹

Affiliations

¹ College of Physics, MIIT Key Laboratory of Aerospace Information Materials and Physics, State Key Laboratory of Mechanics and Control for Aerospace Structures, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 211106, China.
² Research Center of Structural Health Monitoring and Prognosis, State Key Laboratory of Mechanics and Control for Aerospace Structures, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 211106, China.
³ National Key Laboratory of Materials for Integrated Circuits, Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, 865 Changning Road, Shanghai 200050, China.
⁴ Tianjin Key Lab for Rare Earth Materials and Applications, Center for Rare Earth and Inorganic Functional Materials, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Nankai University, Tianjin 300350, China.

PMID: 37826857
DOI: 10.1021/acsami.3c10885

Abstract

Piezoelectric sensors are excellent damage detectors that can be applied to structural health monitoring (SHM). SHM for complex structures of aerospace vehicles working in harsh conditions is frequently required, posing challenging requirements for a sensor's flexibility, radiation hardness, and high-temperature tolerance. Here, we fabricate a flexible and lightweight Pb(Zr_0.53Ti_0.47)O₃ piezoelectric film on flexible KMg₃(AlSi₃O₁₀)F₂ substrate via van der Waals (vdW) heteroepitaxy, endowing it with robust ferroelectric and piezoelectric properties under low energy-high flux protons (LE-HFPs) radiation (10¹⁵ p/cm²). More importantly, the Pb(Zr_0.53Ti_0.47)O₃ film sensor maintains highly stable damage monitoring sensitivity on an aluminum plate under harsh conditions of LE-HFPs radiation (10¹⁵ p/cm², flat structure), high temperature (175 °C, flat structure), and mechanical fatigue (bending 10⁵ cycles under a radius of 5 mm, curved structure). All these superior qualities are suggested to result from the outstanding film crystal quality due to vdW epitaxy. The flexible and lightweight Pb(Zr_0.53Ti_0.47)O₃ film sensor demonstrated in this work provides an ideal candidate for real-time SHM of aerospace vehicles with flat and complex curve-like structures working in harsh aerospace environments.

Keywords: PZT; flexible devices; low energy proton radiation; piezoelectric sensor; structural health monitoring.