Quartz ultrasonic applications

The practical application of ultrasonics requires effective transducers to change electrical energy into mechanical vibrations and vice versa. Transducers are usually piezoelectric, ferroelectric, or magnetostrictive. The application of a voltage across a piezoelectric crystal causes it to deform with an amplitude of deformation proportional to the voltage. Reversal of the voltage causes reversal of the mechanical strain. Quartz and synthetic ceramic materials are used. 

Ultrasonic Thermometers. These are usually designed to respond to the temperature dependence of sound speed. In special cases where only one particular temperature is of interest, such as the temperature of a phase change, or the recrystallization temperature of a substance, the temperature dependence of attenuation may be utilized, Ultrasonic thermometers have found applications in the range —80 to +250 C, where the so-called quartz thermometer offers resolution of 0,1 millidegree and linear superiority to platinum resistance thermometers. 

Piezoelectricity links the fields of electricity and acoustics. Piezoelectric materials are key components in acoustic transducers such as microphones, loudspeakers, transmitters, burglar alarms and submarine detectors. The Curie brothers [7] in 1880 first observed the phenomenon in quartz crystals. Langevin [8] in 1916 first reported the application of piezoelectrics to acoustics. He used piezoelectric quartz crystals in an ultrasonic sending and detection system - a forerunner to present day sonar systems. Subsequently, other materials with piezoelectric properties were discovered. These included the crystal Rochelle salt [9], the ceramics lead barium titanate/zirconate (pzt) and barium titanate [10] and the polymer poly(vinylidene fluoride) [11]. Other polymers such as nylon 11 [12], poly(vinyl chloride) [13] and poly (vinyl fluoride) [14] exhibit piezoelectric behavior, but to a much smaller extent. Strain constants characterize the piezoelectric response. These relate a vector quantity, the electrical field, to a tensor quantity, the mechanical stress (or strain). In this convention, the film orientation direction is denoted by 1, the width by 2 and the thickness by 3. Thus, the piezoelectric strain constant dl3 refers to a polymer film held in the orientation direction with the electrical field applied parallel to the thickness or 3 direction. The requirements for observing piezoelectricity in materials are a non-symmetric unit cell and a net dipole movement in the structure. There are 32-point groups, but only 30 of these have non-symmetric unit cells and are therefore capable of exhibiting piezoelectricity. Further, only 10 out of these twenty point groups exhibit both piezoelectricity and pyroelectricity. The piezoelectric strain constant, d, is related to the piezoelectric stress coefficient, g, by... 

P(VDCN-VAc) has been used in ultrasonic transducers as a thickness extensional (TE) mode resonator. The transducer of piezoelectric fluoropolymers. PVDF and/or P(VDF-TVFE), is well known in medical applications. Ihble 3 lists data on the electromechanical properties of P(VDCN-VAc), P> F. and PZT. Ekctmmechanical coupling frurtor K, of these polymers is 0 J-0 J, which is larger than that of quartz but substantially... 

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