Additively‐manufactured piezoelectric devices (Phys. Status Solidi A 10∕2015)

A low-cost stereolithography technique that is used for printing complex 3D polymer structures has been adapted by Woodward et al. (pp. 2107–2113) to print piezoelectric ceramics with functional structures. A light-curable resin containing powdered 0.65Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-0.35PbTiO3 is solidified in layers 50 μm thick, using a simple bundle of three LEDs and a digital micro-mirror device to control the shape of the area being cured to a resolution of 25 μm. The resulting composites are sintered, forming dense ceramics with virtually the same physical properties as ceramics made by the traditional manufacturing route of axial compression of powders. A hollow, spherical structure was built, sintered, poled radially and made to resonate in the gigahertz range. This technique has the potential to produce a new generation of functional devices, including pumps, sonoluminescence generators, 1-3 piezocomposites, transducers for bespoke surfaces, flexoelectric sensors or flextensional transducers, freed from the conventional restrictions on geometry.