Pressure Sensing using Piezoceramic - A Low Cost Technique

In this work a simple and cost-effective method is described to observe the pressure sensing characteristics of a piezoceramic 0.50(Ba0.7Ca0.3)TiO3-0.50Ba(Zr0.2Ti0.8)O-3 (BCZT50) from drop weight impact method by making use of IC-555 timer in astable mode connection. The morphotropic phase boundary composition of BCZT50 ceramic was prepared using solid-state reaction technique. The formation of a single-phase compound was checked by X-ray diffraction method. The crystal symmetry, space group, and lattice parameters were ascertained by the X-ray diffraction data of BCZT50 using FullProf software The surface morphology of BCZT50 was analyzed utilizing a scanning electron microscope. The width of the output signal and dielectric constant was found to increase with the increasing applied mechanical energy. Hence, the circuit could be utilized for pressure and/or flow sensing applications. Additionally, this simple experiment may be proved to be beneficial for physics, materials science or electrical engineering student at the post-graduate level, or it may be adopted as a project work depending upon the existing experimental facilities.