Lithium tantalate , piezoelectric

Lithium tantalate is a single-crystal material that is produced in quantity by the Czochralski method (see Section 3.11) for piezoelectric applications and is therefore readily available. It is stable in a hard vacuum to temperatures that allow outgassing procedures. It is insensitive to humidity. It is widely used where precise measurements are to be made. 

Smith RT, Welsh FS (1971) Temperature dependence of the elastic, piezoelectric, and dielectric constants of lithium tantalate and lithium niobate. J Appl Phys 42 2219... 

In contrast to polycrystaUine ceramic materials with ferroic properties, there exist nonferroic single crystal piezoelectrics such as a-quartz or materials with a calcium gaUium germanate (CGG) structure, as well as single crystal pyroelectrics with perovskite structure such as lithium tantalate (IiTa03). 

Since the electro-optic tensor has the same symmetry as the tensor of the inverse piezoelectric effect, the linear electro-optic (Pockels) effect is confined to the symmetry groups in which piezoelectricity occurs (see Table 8.3). The electro-optic coefficients of most dielectric materials are small (of the order of 10 m V ), with the notable exception of ferroelectrics such as potassium dihydrogen phosphate (KDP KH2PO4), lithium niobate (liNbOs), lithium tantalate (LiTaOs), barium sodium niobate (Ba2NaNb50i5), or strontium barium niobate (Sro.75Bao.25Nb206) (Zheludev, 1990). For example, the tensorial matrix of KDP with symmetry group 42m has the form... 

Piezoelectrics nonconducting materials that are permanently polarized within a given temperature range. For example, ferroelectrics, lithium tantalate - LiTaOs, potassium nitrate - KNO3... 

In the field of solid state physics, one of the most investigated materials is ferroelectric, which has important applications as memory switching [1-4], nonlinear optical communications [5], non-volatile memory devices [6, 7], and many others [8, 9]. Ferroelectrics have also emerged as important materials as (a) piezoelectric transducers, (b) pyroelectric detectors, (c) surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices, and (d) four-phase mixing doublers. Both lithium tantalate and lithium niobate appear to be promising candidates as the key photonic materials for a variety of devices (a) optical parametric oscillators, (b) nonlinear frequency converters, (c) second-order norrlinear optical material, and (d) holography, etc. Many of such devices include important nano-devices [9-11],... 

Any type of acoustic transducer, such as quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) or surface acoustic wave device (SAW), is fundamentally based on the piezoelectric effect. This was first described in 1880 by Jacques and Pierre Curie as a property of crystalline materials that do not have an inversion centre. When such a material is subjected to physical stress, a measurable voltage occurs on the crystal surfaces. Naturally, the opposite effect can also be observed, i.e. applying an electrical charge on a piezoelectric material leads to mechanical distortion, the so-called inverse piezo effect. These phenomena can be used to transfrom an electrical signal to a mechanical one and back, which actually happens in QCM and SAW. Different materials are ap-pHed for device fabrication, such as quartz, Hthium tantalate, lithium titanate... 

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