Piezoelectric sensing is of increasing interest for high-temperature applications in aerospace, automotive, power plants and material processing due to its low cost, compact sensor size and simple signal conditioning, in comparison with other high-temperature sensing techniques. This paper presented an overview of high-temperature piezoelectric sensing techniques. Firstly, different types of high-temperature piezoelectric single crystals, electrode materials, and their pros and cons are discussed. Secondly, recent work on high-temperature piezoelectric sensors including accelerometer, surface acoustic wave sensor, ultrasound transducer, acoustic emission sensor, gas sensor, and pressure sensor for temperatures up to 1,250 °C were reviewed. Finally, discussions of existing challenges and future work for high-temperature piezoelectric sensing are presented.

In force measurement applications, a piezoelectric force sensor is one of the most popular sensors due to its advantages of low cost, linear response, and high sensitivity. Piezoelectric sensors effectively convert dynamic forces to electrical signals by the direct piezoelectric effect, but their use has been limited in measuring static forces due to the easily neutralized surface charge. To overcome this shortcoming, several static (either pure static or quasistatic) force sensing techniques using piezoelectric materials have been developed utilizing several unique parameters rather than just the surface charge produced by an applied force. The parameters for static force measurement include the resonance frequency, electrical impedance, decay time constant, and capacitance. In this review, we discuss the detailed mechanism of these piezoelectric‐type, static force sensing methods that use more than the direct piezoelectric effect. We also highlight the challenges and potentials of each method for static force sensing applications.

Relaxor-PbTiO₃ piezoelectric single crystals have been widely used in a broad range of electromechanical devices, including piezoelectric sensors, actuators, and transducers. This paper reviews the unique properties of these single crystals for piezoelectric sensors. Design, fabrication and characterization of various relaxor-PT single crystal piezoelectric sensors and their applications are presented and compared with their piezoelectric ceramic counterparts. Newly applicable fields and future trends of relaxor-PT sensors are also suggested in this review paper.

We present the development of a 6 × 6 piezoelectric array sensor for measuring elasticity and force. The proposed sensor employs an impedance measurement technique, sensing the acoustic load impedance of a target by measuring the electrical impedance shift of face-shear mode PMN–PT (lead magnesium niobate–lead titanate) single crystal elements. Among various modes of PMN–PT single crystals, the face-shear mode was selected due to its especially high sensitivity to acoustic loads. To verify the elasticity sensing performance, gelatin samples with different elastic moduli were prepared and tested. For the force measurement test, different magnitudes of force were loaded to the sensing layer whose acoustic impedance was varied with applied forces. From the experimental results, the fabricated sensor showed an elastic stiffness sensitivity of 23.52 Ohm/MPa with a resolution of 4.25 kPa and contact force sensitivity of 19.27 Ohm/N with a resolution of 5.19 mN. In addition, the mapping experiment of elasticity and force using the sensor array was successfully demonstrated.