Ultrasonic Needles based on Mn-doped Ternary Piezocrystals

三元压电晶体是指一组新的单晶压电材料，它们具有比二元组分高得多的机械Q和高得多的能量密度。三元压电晶体现在的性能足以使它们能够并入高功率超声波设备中。它们的掺杂对应物是一种非常新的发展，提供了以前无法获得的性质。最重要的是，对于高功率超声波换能器，他们将机械Q从100左右提高到近1000。然而，需要全新的超声波换能器配置才能充分利用这种提高的性能。通过对掺杂的三元压电晶体材料进行表征和掺入，并利用它们在换能器增强方面的巨大潜力，我们将能够创造出用于外科手术的新一代高性能、高功率超声波设备。我们将特别研究它们在新型整形外科设备中的集成，目标是极具挑战性和潜在颠覆性的超声辅助针头技术。对于直接穿透骨骼的微创、高精度介入性手术，我们将提供设备，为临床医生提供全新的、潜在的变革能力，应用于一系列临床应用，包括肿瘤学、神经外科、骨科、骨活检、区域麻醉和风湿病。为了迎接这一挑战，我们将开发新的材料表征技术，并根据测量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穿骨超声针，它可以用掺杂的三元压电晶体来实现，从而实现具有高度挑战性的外科任务：(I)直接将治疗药物输送到骨骼内或被骨骼遮挡的靶点，(Ii)进入髓管和颅窦/腔内进行外科手术，以及(Iii)从骨骼内部获取活检以进行诊断。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，随着不断努力扩大晶体生长技术的成熟，这些组合物以及用于其他高价值应用的较新的三元组合物的采用将会增加。因此，该项目将使英国处于研究的前沿，同时提供外科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.