Deployment of piezoelectric transducers for diverse technical applications: A comprehensive review

Abstract

Piezoelectric materials are used in various applications due to its unique electro-mechanical coupling ability. To restrict the consumption of exhaustible energy sources, piezoelectric materials have been widely explored for converting mechanical energy into electrical energy. However, exploration of piezoelectric materials in other various advanced applications like sound absorption, water treatment, oil-water separation are not documented systematically to the best of our knowledge. It appears that piezoelectric materials are conventionally explored extensively for energy harvesting applications. But their other innovative technical applications are still in their infancy stage. There lies a huge scope in development and implementation of these materials for other new domains. Thus, the prime focus of the present article is to explore such unique materials in areas other than their conventional usages. The compilation would help the readers to expand their domain knowledge for utilization of piezoelectric materials in innovative applications and motivate the researchers to explore applications for future needs. In the onset of this review, the basic understanding of piezoelectricity is explained. Thereafter, different applications of piezoelectric materials like energy harvesting, sound absorption, water treatment, structural health monitoring and applications in biomedical segment are critically analyzed.