Manufacturing methods for piezoelectric ceramic materials

After the material designing such as solid solution compositions and dopants, we need to consider material fabrication processes. The fabrication of piezoelectric ceramic devices generally involves two steps: preparation of the ceramic powders and sintering of the shaped structures. Wet chemical preparation methods are utilized for producing the ceramic powders in order to ensure reproducibility of the advanced characteristics of the devices. Popular device designs include multilayers, bimorphs and other composite types. Necessary basic knowledge of particle size and film thickness effect on ferroelectricity will also be discussed in conjunction with micro/nano technologies in this chapter.