Ceramic Piezoelectric Transducers

The work described in this report was carried out in the Materials Research Laboratory of The Pennsylvania State University over the period January 1, 1978 to December 31, 1978. The period is the final year of a joint DARPAONR sponsored three-year contract effort directed towards the development of new and improved piezoceramic materials for electromechanical transducers. A major success of the program has been the development of new composite transducers with unusually high piezoelectric gh coefficients. A second important advance has been the development of a new family of electrostrictive materials based on the ferroelectric relaxor Pb3MgNb209 PMN. Sophisticated computer aided graphics techniques have been used to develop a phenomenological Gibbs function for the PZT solid solution family. In support of these major efforts, a considerable amount of detailed work has been done to develop the processing capabilities required to assemble the many different ceramics and composites which have been the topics of study. A small additional effort was committed to the growth of single crystals and of oriented polycrystals of the ferroelectric antimony sulphur iodide SbSI.