Performance of transducers with segmented piezoelectric stacks using materials with high electromechanical coupling coefficient

Underwater acoustic transducers often include a stack of thickness polarized piezoelectric material pieces of alternating polarity interspersed with electrodes, bonded together and electrically connected in parallel. The stack is normally much shorter than a quarter wavelength at the fundamental resonance frequency, so that the mechanical behavior of the transducer is not affected by the segmentation. When the transducer bandwidth is less than a half octave, as has conventionally been the case, stack segmentation has no significant effect on the mechanical behavior of the device. However, when a high coupling coefficient material such as PMN-PT is used to achieve a wider bandwidth, the difference between a segmented stack and a similar piezoelectric section with electrodes only at the two ends can be significant. This paper investigates the effects of stack segmentation on the performance of wideband underwater acoustic transducers, particularly tonpilz transducer elements. Included is discussion of transducer designs using single crystal piezoelectric material with high coupling coefficient compared with more traditional PZT ceramics.Comment: 26 pages including 14 figures, one table and one appendi

Some plant leaves have orientation-dependent EPR and NMR spectra

Proton nuclear magnetic resonance ((1)H NMR) spectra of leaves from 50 plant species were obtained at a spectrometer frequency of 470 MHz. Water present in leaf samples gives rise to characteristic spectral patterns. Most species show only one broad (1)H NMR peak; however, the leaves of some plants display complex, orientation-dependent spectra in which a common three-line pattern is discerned. The pattern varies with the angle between the leaf surface and the external magnetic field. Proton relaxation measurements show the presence of at least two water compartments in the leaves. The compartments are responsible for different components of the spectral pattern. EPR spectra, obtained at 35 GHz and at a temperature of -180°C, of plant leaf sections are dominated by the strong signals of manganous ions. We find that most plant leaves have isotropic Mn(2+) EPR spectra. However, in some species (including ones that exhibit orientation-dependent (1)H NMR spectra) we detect orientation-dependent intensities in the forbidden lines; the spectra indicate that Mn(2+) ions occupy binding sites with axial or lower symmetry on nonrandomly oriented membranes. Both the NMR and the EPR results suggest that the chloroplasts of some plants are preferentially aligned with respect to the leaf surface