Study on pore-forming agents in processing of porous piezoceramics

Porous piezoceramics have wide performance advantages over monolithic ceramic and polymer piezoelectric materials in underwater sensing and actuation applications. This paper describes the effect of various pore-forming agents during burnt plastic spheres (BURPS) processing of porous ceramics. Three kinds of polymeric materials were used as pore forming agents for BURPS processing of porous piezoceramics. Properties such as the piezoelectric charge coefficient, hydrostatic charge coefficient and hydrostatic voltage coefficient were studied. The effect of various pore forming agents on porous piezoceramics was also investigated. The microstructures of the porous piezoceramics were also recorded to study the effect of pore-forming agents on microstructure and properties. (C) 2005 Springer Science + Business Media, Inc.