Air-coupled ultrasonic transducer based on lead-free piezoceramics prepared by digital light processing 3D printing

Piezoelectric composite ceramics, as the key components of ultrasonic transducers, have their vibration modes, electromechanical coupling performance, and acoustic impedance closely related to the volume fraction of ceramics. This study employed a novel digital light processing 3D printing technique (DLP) to fabricate 0.5Ba(Zr_0.2Ti_0.8)O₃-0.5(Ba_0.7Ca_0.3)TiO₃ (BCZT)-based 1–3 piezoelectric composite ceramics with different ceramic volume fractions (15.6 %, 23.5 %, 36.2 %, 48.4 %, 59.5 %). It demonstrates the suitability of the DLP process for the fabrication of 1–3 piezoelectric composite ceramics and investigates the influence of ceramic volume fraction on the performance of these ceramics. When the piezoelectric ceramic volume fraction was 59.5 %, the piezoelectric coefficient effective d₃₃ of the 1–3 piezoelectric composite device reached 315 pC/N, demonstrating excellent piezoelectric performance. The acoustic impedance Z was 16.3 MRayl, and the thickness electromechanical coupling coefficient k_t was 0.55, indicating high energy conversion efficiency. The air-coupled ultrasonic transducer prepared from the 1–3 piezoelectric composite ceramics with a ceramic volume fraction of 59.5 % exhibited a round-trip insertion loss (IL) of −70.32 dB and a −6 dB bandwidth (BW_-6dB) of 7.42 %. This work provides a more convenient and new method for the preparation of lead-free piezoelectric ceramic ultrasonic transducers.