piezoelectricity is basically a property of crystalline materials.

so forget about amorphous form and seeing piezoelectricity.

You can make sol gel solutions of PZT and deposit them on aluminum or steel, and later anneal them to crystallize the films. then pole the polycrystalline films, and induce piezoelectricity in the layers. You have to be a little careful, because when you anneal the films in oxygen or air, they can have an interdiffused regions with the aluminum or the steel substrate.

You have to deposit high temperature special metallic coatings on such metal substrates which are platinum film based to prevent any corrosive effects between the metal substrate and the piezoelectric film.

alternately if you really need a piezoelectric film, you can try the piezo polymers (PVDF) coatings.

K. Sreenivas

Thank you very much sir! I'll definitely follow these guidelines. But where do I find the procedure and composition for sol-gel method used for piezoelectric material? Will any literature paper will be fine to follow the steps? I am very new to this field but want to work on this platform! Sorry if these are silly questions.

if polymers are suitable you can use PVDF and its co-polymers. Its has amorphous as well as crystalline form depending on the annealing conditions. 

It is my understanding that potential uses exist which require film thickness of 1 to 30 μm. In this respect, ZnO and PZT have been used for piezoelectric fiber optic phase modulators fabrication. The piezoelectric materials have been sputter deposited using DC magnetron source and multimagnetron sputtering systems. Coatings of 6 µm thick of ZnO and 0.5 µm of PZT are possible to achieve using these systems. However, thickness variation of approximately 15% occurs between the center and the end of ZnO coatings, results on affected modulation performance. Although PZT coatings achieved by sputtering posses uniformity and do not exhibit cracking, the PZT is only partially crystallized and it is actually a composite structure consisting of crystalline and amorphous material, reducing the properties of piezoelectrics.

To my knowledge, sol-gel technique for thick PZT films have been developed. It is now possible to fabricate PZT sol-gel films of up to 60 µm. Also, the electrical and piezoelectrical properties of the thick films reported are comparable with ceramic PZT.

Hope this information helps answer your question.

Professor Yehia Khalil

Yale University

USA