High-sensitivity accelerometer based on [001]-textured Mn-PMN-PZT piezoelectric ceramics

Textured piezoelectric ceramics have emerged as promising materials for next generation high‑performance piezoelectric accelerometers due to their excellent piezoelectric properties. In this work, compression-mode piezoelectric accelerometers were designed and fabricated using conventional untextured PZT-5 ceramics and newly developed textured Mn-PMN-PZT ceramics, referred to as ACC_U and ACC_T. Firstly, highly oriented Mn-PMN-PZT textured ceramics were synthesized via templated grain growth method, exhibiting a piezoelectric charge constant d₃₃ of 984 pC/N and a piezoelectric voltage constant g₃₃ of 42.4 mV·m/N, substantially higher than those of conventional PZT‑5 ceramics (430 pC/N and 28.6 mV·m/N). Secondly, finite element method (FEM) was employed to analyze the influence of the seismic mass (m), piezoelectric properties (d₃₃, g₃₃), geometric dimensions, and electrical connection schemes on accelerometer sensitivity. The results show that the charge sensitivity (S_Q) scales linearly with d₃₃, whereas voltage sensitivity (S_V) is determined by both g₃₃ and the geometric dimensions of the piezoelectric element. Finally, guided by these results, ACC_U and ACC_T with identical dimensions piezoelectric ceramics were fabricated for direct performance comparison. Experimental results show that ACC_T achieves S_Q of 78.3 pC/g and S_V of 354 mV/g, which are approximately 105% and 74% higher than those of ACC_U (38.1 pC/g and 204 mV/g). The enhancement in sensitivity primarily originates from the higher d₃₃ and g₃₃ of the textured ceramics, in good agreement with simulation. These results clearly demonstrate the advantage of textured piezoelectric ceramics for high-precision piezoelectric accelerometers in vibration monitoring and condition diagnosis of electrical equipment.