A practical guide to characterization of piezoceramic components and materials

In this guide Dr. Tomasz Zawada from TOOsonix explains the most important parameters of piezoceramic components and how to measure them using the Bode 100

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Device and systems using piezoelectric components are ubiquitous. One can find them in aerospace and automotive systems (e.g. vibration monitoring, diesel engine injection valves), medical diagnostics and therapeutic systems (e.g. ultrasonic scanners) and in everyday life situations such as mobile devices and simple igniters. No matter what the application a good understanding of piezoelectric components and materials is fundamental for everyone developing new systems or repairing existing ones. And an impedance analyzer such as Bode 100 is an essential tool for a variety of tasks such as:

  • Incoming or outgoing inspection
  • Functionality testing
  • Component/material selection
  • Material identification
  • Design optimization
  • Prototyping

The following document describes a practical approach how to characterize piezoceramic components and materials using the Bode 100 vector network analyzer:

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Dr. Tomasz Zawada is the co-founder and managing director at TOOsonix A/S, Denmark. Before that he spent nearly 10 year of his career working at Meggitt Denmark – leading manufacturer of piezoceramic materials components and devices in different R&D positions, recently as Director of Engineering and Business Development. He is the inventor of several patents and author of more than 70 scientific papers in the area of piezoelectrics, medical ultrasound, energy harvesting and ceramic microsystems. He holds a M.Sc. in computer science and a Ph.D. in microelectronics from Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland. He furthermore has an MBA degree in Management of Technology from Technical University of Denmark.
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