Ultrasonic Needles based on Mn-doped Ternary Piezocrystals

三元压电晶体是一组新的单晶压电材料的名称，其具有比二元组合物高得多的机械Q和高得多的能量密度。三元压电晶体具有现在足以将其结合到高功率超声设备中的特性。它们的掺杂对应物是最近开发的，提供了以前不可用的特性。对于高功率超声换能器来说，最重要的是，它们将机械Q从大约100增加到近1000。然而，需要全新的超声换能器配置来充分利用这种提高的性能。通过掺杂三元压电晶体材料的表征和结合，并利用其在换能器增强方面的巨大潜力，我们将能够创造下一代高性能，高功率的外科超声设备。我们将特别研究它们在新型骨科器械中的整合，旨在应对超声辅助针这一极具挑战性和潜在破坏性的技术。对于通过直接穿透骨进行的微创、高精度介入手术，我们将提供设备，为临床医生提供全新的和潜在的变革能力，适用于一系列临床应用，包括肿瘤学、神经外科、骨科、骨活检、局部麻醉和风湿病学。为了应对这一挑战，我们将开发新的材料表征技术，并根据测得的特性设计新型换能器，用于驱动功率超声手术工具。我们将研究一种新型的骨穿透超声针形式的器械，该器械可以用掺杂的三元压电晶体实现，以允许（i）将治疗药物直接输送到骨内或被骨遮挡的靶点，（ii）进入髓管和颅内窦/腔进行外科手术，和（iii）从骨的内部获得活组织检查用于诊断。新材料的二元组合物已经在生物医学成像应用中取代了传统的压电陶瓷，并且随着不断努力扩大晶体生长技术的成熟，采用这些和更新的三元组合物用于其他高价值应用将增加。因此，该项目将使英国处于研究的最前沿，同时提供手术超声设备的变革性研究。

Ternary piezocrystals is the name given to a new group of single crystal piezoelectric materials that have a much higher mechanical Q and much higher energy densities than the binary compositions. Ternary piezocrystals have properties that are now sufficient for enabling their incorporation in high power ultrasonic devices. Their doped counterparts are a very recent development offering previously unavailable properties. Most importantly for high power ultrasonic transducers, they have increased the mechanical Q from around 100 to nearly 1000. However, completely new ultrasonic transducer configurations are needed to exploit fully this increased performance. Through characterisation and incorporation of doped ternary piezocrystal materials, and by capitalising on their significant potential for transducer enhancements, we will be able to create next generation high performance, high power ultrasonic devices for surgery. We will particularly investigate their integration in novel orthopaedic devices, aiming at the extremely challenging and potentially disruptive technology of ultrasonically-assisted needles. For minimally invasive, highly accurate, interventional surgery via direct penetration through bone, we will deliver devices offering the clinician entirely new and potentially transformational capabilities in a range of clinical applications including oncology, neurosurgery, orthopaedics, bone biopsy, regional anaesthesia and rheumatology. In meeting this challenge, we will develop new techniques for characterisation of the materials and create designs for novel transducers, based on the measured characteristics, for actuation of power ultrasonic surgical tools. We will research a new class of devices in the form of bone-penetrating ultrasonic needles that can be realised with doped ternary piezocrystals to permit the highly challenging surgical tasks of (i) direct delivery of therapeutic drugs to targets within or obscured by bone, (ii) gaining access within medullary canals and inside cranial sinuses/cavities for surgical procedures, and (iii) obtaining biopsies from the inside of the bone for diagnosis. Binary compositions of the new materials are already replacing conventional piezoceramics in biomedical imaging applications and adoption of these and the newer ternary compositions for other high value applications will increase as on-going efforts to scale up crystal growth techniques mature. This project will thus position the UK in the forefront of research, while simultaneously offering transformative research in ultrasonic devices for surgery.