Leslie Bowen
Richard Gentilman
Hong Pham
William Serwatka
Daniel Fiore
Mater. Syst., Inc., 521 Great Rd., Littleton, MA 01460
1--3 and 2--2 piezoelectric ceramic/polymer composites offer design versatility and performance advantages over monolithic piezoelectric ceramic and monolithic piezoelectric polymer devices in both resonant and nonresonant transducer applications. Recently, a new process, viz., ceramic injection molding, has been applied to solve the difficulties of cost-effectively manufacturing the arrays of fine PZT ceramic elements required for composite transducer assembly. As a result, these materials are now available in commercial quantities for the first time. In this paper, Materials Systems, Inc. briefly introduces its PZT ceramic injection molding transducer manufacturing process, and then reviews the performance of various 1--3 composite transducer designs as a function of composite layout, materials, and transducer performance enhancement features, such as stiff cover plates and Poisson's ratio decoupling. The performance of several transducer designs in both nonresonant sensing and actuating undersea applications, and in high-frequency resonant applications, e.g., acoustic imaging, is discussed. [Work supported by ONR.]