Printed piezoelectric materials for vibration-based damage detection

Piezoelectric materials are of high interest for many applications, e.g. vibrations measurement, active vibration control or vibration-based damage detection in Structural Health Monitoring (SHM). In this paper, thin electroded microceramics of piezoelectric material are straightforward fabricated thanks to the association of the screen-printing technology to the sacrificial layer method. After subsequent printing and drying of a stack of sacrificial, Au, PZT and Au layers on a substrate, piezoelectric disks are fired at 900°C and then released from the substrate. Studies of the electromechanical behaviour of these components obviously show the influence of the sacrificial layer composition on their densification and consequently their piezoelectric properties, favourable for detection of vibrations and SHM applications. Moreover, printing process might lead to lower cost of microceramics implementation than traditional ceramic process