Novel Designs for Enhanced Performance Parameters of Porous Relaxor Ferroelectric Ceramics

Porous piezoelectric materials are widely used in acoustic, underwater, biomedical and energy harvesting applications due to their superior sensitivity, improved signal-to-noise ratio and effective impedance matching. Finite element simulations performed on various piezoelectric materials have demonstrated that the size, shape and distribution of the pores affect the performance of their devices. However, the performance of porous 0.68Pb(Mg 1/3 Nb 2/3 )O 3 –0.32PbTiO 3 (PMN-0.32PT) has not been explored yet, despite its excellent electromechanical properties. Moreover, previous studies have considered either an ordered and uniform or a random distribution of the pores. Ordered but non-uniform pore distributions, however, remain largely unexplored. Therefore, this study presents a detailed finite element analysis of porous PMN-0.32PT with four novel ordered and non-uniform distributions of circular, elliptical, hexagonal and square-shaped pores. Results show that the use of PMN-0.32PT enhances the performance parameters governing the sensitivity (up to [Formula: see text]) and efficiency (up to [Formula: see text]) of the porous piezoelectric devices. In addition, the use of a novel nonuniform distribution of pores further enhances the performance parameters. The study identifies optimal pore architectures for both longitudinal and transverse configurations and provides guidelines for designing porous PMN-0.32PT with enhanced performance parameters.