Fabication and piezoelectric property characterization of a novel Mico/Nano PZT epoxy 1–3 composite

Piezoelectric composites show high promise as components in ultrasonic transducers for higher resolution medical imaging, and structural health monitoring systems as they have excellent piezoelectric properties, such as high piezoelectric coefficients, high electromechanical coupling coefficients, and high dielectric constant. A novel Micro/Nano PZT epoxy 1-3 composite was fabricated in this work. Carbon template with porous and structurally-ordered pattern was prepared firstly by chemical activation technology. Micro/Nano PZT fibers were fabricated by the carbon template method. In addition, Micro/Nano PZT epoxy 1-3 composites had been prepared by arranging Micro/Nano PZT fibers and casting epoxy resin. The fiber samples were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) techniques. The impedance-frequency of PZT/epoxy 1-3 composites were directly measured using an HP impedance analyzer. Effective electromechanical coupling of PZT/epoxy 1-3 composites were measured and calculated using a standard IEEE technique. The initial results show that the piezoelectric epoxy 1-3 composite has good piezoelectric properties and diameter of PZT fiber is only about ten microns, the length up to several millimeters. In addition, PZT fibers are smooth, straight and have the crystal structure of perovskite type. The fabricated PZT/epoxy micro/nano composite has strong piezoelectric properties.