Strong ultrasonic microwaves in ferroelectric ceramics

It is well known that ferroelectric materials have piezoelectric properties which allow the transformation of electrical signals into mechanical signals and vice versa. The transducer action normally is restricted to frequencies up to the mechanical resonance frequency of the sample. There are, however, two mechanisms which allow transducer action in ferroelectric ceramics at much higher frequencies: one is the normal piezoelectric effect in a ferroelectric ceramic in which the crystallites have periodic domain structures, the other is a domain wall effect in which ferroelastic domain walls in a periodic domain structure are powerful shear wave emitters. Both mechanisms give rise to extensive dielectric losses in ceramics at microwave frequencies.