High-frequency ultrasonic imaging with improved spatial resolution has gained increasing attention in the field of biomedical imaging. Sensitivity of transducers plays a pivotal role in determining ultrasonic image quality. Conventional ultrasonic transducers are mostly made from lead-based piezoelectric materials that may be harmful to the human body and the environment. In this study, a new (K,Na)NbO $_{3}$ -KTiNbO $_5$ -BaZrO $_{3}$ -Fe $_{2}$ O $_{3}$ -MgO (KNN-NTK-FM) lead-free piezoelectric ceramic was utilized in developing eco-friendly transducers for high-frequency biomedical ultrasonic imaging applications. A needle transducer with a small active aperture size of 0.45 × 0.55 mm $^2$ was designed and evaluated. The fabricated transducer exhibits great performance with a high center frequency (52.6 MHz), a good electromechanical coupling ( $k$ $_{eff}$ ~ 0.45), a large bandwidth (64.4% at -6 dB), and a very low two-way insertion loss (10.1 dB). Such high sensitivity is superior to those transducers based on other lead-free piezoelectric materials and can even be comparable to the lead-based ones. Imaging performance of the KNN-NTK-FM needle transducer was analyzed by imaging a wire phantom and an agar tissue-mimicking phantom. Imaging capabilities of the transducer were further demonstrated by ex vivo imaging studies on a porcine eyeball and a rabbit aorta. The results suggest that the KNN-NTK-FM piezoceramic has many attractive properties over other lead-free piezoelectric materials in developing eco-friendly highly sensitive transducers for high-frequency biomedical ultrasonic imaging applications.

(Pb_0.97La_0.02)(Zr_0.95Ti_0.05)O₃ (PLZT2/95/5) ceramics were successfully prepared via a solid-state reaction route. The dielectric properties were investigated in the temperature region of 26–650 °C. The dielectric diffuse anomaly in the dielectric relaxation was found in the high temperature region of 600–650 °C with increasing the measuring frequency, which was related to the dynamic thermal process of ionized oxygen vacancies generated in the high temperature. Two phase transition points were detected during heating, which were found to coexist from 150 to 200 °C. Electric field induced ferroelectric to antiferroelectric phase transition behavior of the (Pb_0.97La_0.02)(Zr_0.95Ti_0.05)O₃ ceramics was investigated in this work with an emphasis on energy storage properties. A recoverable energy-storage density of 0.83 J/cm³ and efficiency of 70% was obtained in (Pb_0.97La_0.02)(Zr_0.95Ti_0.05)O₃ ceramics at 55 kV/cm. Based on these results, (Pb_0.97La_0.02)(Zr_0.95Ti_0.05)O₃ ceramics with a large recoverable energy-storage density could be a potential candidate for the applications in high energy-storage density ceramic capacitors.

This work evaluated the resistance switching characteristics in the (100)-oriented Pb(Zn_1/3Nb_2/3)_0.91Ti_0.09O₃ (PZNT) single crystal. The current hysteresis can be closely related to the ferroelectric polarization and we provided a possible explanation using a model about oxygen vacancies to analyze the mechanism of switching. The obvious frequency dispersion of the relative permittivity signified the relaxer-type behavior of the sample. The value of the relaxation parameter γ = 1.48 was estimated from the linear fit of the modified Curie-Weiss law, indicating the relaxer nature. High-temperature dielectric relaxation behaviors were revealed in the temperature region of 400–650 °C. In addition, under the measuring frequency of 10 kHz, ε_r was tunable by changing the electric field and the largest tunability of ε_r reached 14.78%. At room temperature, the high pyroelectric coefficient and detectivity figure of merit were reported.

Relaxer ferroelectrics are highly attractive in electrocaloric due to large breakdown electric field and wide phase transition temperatures, which has great potential applications in solid-state cooling. In this work, relaxer ferroelectrics are synthesized by a traditional solid state reaction method. Phase transition and relaxer characteristics are studied by temperature dependent dielectric spectrums. Temperature dependent ferroelectric properties are also studied to calculate electrocaloric effect. Maximum value of refrigeration efficiency η ( ΔT/ΔE ) is about 0.079 K·cm/kV, our result lays a foundation and provides a reference for studying high efficiency solid-state electrocaloric refrigeration. Pyroelectric energy harvesting are studied, maximum pyroelectric energy harvesting is 279 kJ/cm 3 .