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We investigated the effects of alternating current poling (ACP) on the piezoelectric and dielectric properties of 3-MHz sliver mode (L13 mm W0. 10–0. 25 mm T0. 48 mm) vibrators fashioned from Pb (Mg1/3Nb2/3) O3-0. 30PbTiO3 (PMN-0. 30PT) single crystal (SC) plate manufactured using the continuous-feeding Bridgman (CF-BM) method for cardiac probes. The ACP SC plate (L13 mm W24 mm T0. 48 mm) exhibited ultrahigh dielectric permittivity (^T₃₃/ ₀) and piezoelectric coefficient (d₃₃) of 9690 and 2920 pC/N, respectively. After array dicing, the SC slivers with widths of 0. 10, 0. 15, 0. 20, and 0. 25 mm were obtained, and their average ^T₃₃/ ₀values decreased from the SC plate ^T₃₃/ ₀by 45% (5330), 29% (6880), 19% (7840), and 15% (8240), respectively, possibly because of heat and mechanical damage during the dicing. A combination of the ACP and a postdicing direct current poling (ACP-DCP) recovered their ^T₃₃/ ₀values to 6050, 7080, 8140, and 8540, respectively. The sliver mode electromechanical coupling factors (k'₃₃) were confirmed to exceed 93% after the ACP-DCP process, which were more than 4% higher than those of DCP-DCP SC slivers. The measured impedance spectra indicated that the SC slivers with 0. 10–0. 20 mm in width showed no spurious mode vibration near the fundamentalk'₃₃mode. We conclude that the ACP-DCP SC slivers maintained more enhanced piezoelectric and dielectric properties than the DCP-DCP samples. These results will have important implications for the commercial application of ACP technology to medical imaging ultrasound probes.
Sun et al. (2022) studied this question.