Derivation of Equivalent Material Coefficients of 2-2 Piezoelectric Single Crystal Composite

Abstract

Piezoelectric composites, which consist of piezoelectric materials and polymers, are widely employed in various applications such as underwater sonar transducers and medical diagnostic ultrasonic transducers. Acoustic transducers based on piezoelectric composites can have high sensitivity with broad bandwidth. In recent studies, it is demonstrated that 2-2 composites based on single crystals provide further increased sensitivity and wide bandwidth. In order to utilize a 2-2 composite in acoustic sensors, it is required to demonstrate the full material coefficients of the 2-2 composite. In this study, we investigated an analytic solution for determining equivalent material coefficients of a 2-2 composite. Impedance spectrums of the single-phase resonators with equivalent material coefficients and 2-2 composite resonators were compared by the finite element method in order to verify the analytic solutions. Furthermore, the equivalent material coefficients derived from the analytic solution were also verified by comparing the measured and the simulated impedance spectrums. The difference in resonance and anti-resonance frequencies between the measured and simulated impedance spectrums was around 0.5% and 1.2%. By utilizing the analytic solutions in this study, it is possible to accurately derive full equivalent material coefficients of a 2-2 composite, which are essential for the development of acoustic sensors.