Novel Approach to the Growth of Single Crystalline Relaxors

Single-crystals of PMN-PT and other excellent ferroelectric materials hold the promise of realizing the next generation of high performance piezoelectric transducers. Presently, bulk single crystal growth techniques are severely hampered for producing this type of materials, due to the difficulties caused by lead evaporation and the formation of the other phases. Epitaxial growth of very thick films is a favorable, alternative, approach to obtaining large area, high purity single-crystals. Such technical approach is currently the production method for large transparent single-crystalline ZnS and ZnSe crystals for IR window fabrication. NZ Applied Technologies has developed an innovative low cost process which is well suited to produce large single crystalline PMN-PT. This novel process has unique deposition capabilities of very low cost , large area , and very thick film capability. Based on our initial success in epitaxial growth of relative thick films (25¿m), in Phase I, we will optimize our process to grow large area single-crystalline PMN-PT disk of a few mm in thickness.