Cost-Effective Acicular Seed Production for SSC Piezoelectric Single Crystal Materials

Solid state converted (SSC) piezoelectric single crystal materials have been demonstrated to offer 80 percent of the electromechanical performance of melt-grown single crystals - at only a small fraction of the cost. Cost-effective acicular seedproduction methods are needed in order to scale up the SSC process and make it available for numerous defense and commercial applications. This program will investigate new processes for fabricating acicular seed crystals that are compatible with thePMN-PT ceramic matrix and effectively initiate solid state conversion. The seeds will then be incorporated into the PMN-PT ceramic injection molding process to form rods, which will be sintered using established methods. The electromechanical propertiesof the resulting SSC material will be characterized. This program will provide low cost SSC piezoelectric materials with substantially higher displacement and bandwidth than conventional piezoceramics. These materials will enable radically enhancedperformance in variety of Navy sonar systems as well as in other military, aerospace, and commercial transducers, actuators, and sensors. SSC materials also facilitate size and weight reductions in a number of existing applications.