Synergy of PMN-PT with piezoelectric polymer using sugar casting method for sensing applications

Abstract

Sugar casting is a simple and cost-effective direct method of generating polymer foams. By incorporating grains directly into mixtures of polymer and piezoelectric nanoparticles it is possible to create highly compliant materials with excellent piezoelectric properties. In this work, we use the sugar casting method in combination with spin coating to prepare a highly sensitive and flexible 0-3 piezoelectric polymer thin film membranes with a layer thickness of 20 to 190 µm. Porosities and elasticity are tuned by simply adjusting the sugar/polymer mass ratio. The expected outcome of this research was improvements to the piezoelectric voltage, the g33 measure, due to the increased compliance of the material, however iezoelectric composite membranes with high concentrations of PMN-PT also demonstrated gains in piezoelectric coupling, the d33 measure, when cast with high volume fractions of sugar. A remarkably high d33 coefficient of 69 pm/V was measured using the laser vibrometer technique. These innovative materials were developed as broadband ultrasonic sensors for partial discharge detection in undersea cables, however they have potential uses in energy scavenging platforms, biosensors, and acoustic actuators, among others.