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With the thickness of the crystals decreasing down to the order of tens of micrometers, this new lead-free single crystal exhibits thickness-independent electrical behavior, and maintains superior piezoelectric constant (<jats:italic>d<\/jats:italic><jats:sub><jats:italic>33<\/jats:italic><\/jats:sub>\u2009=\u2009670\u2009pC N<jats:sup>\u22121<\/jats:sup>) and electromechanical coupling factor (<jats:italic>k<\/jats:italic><jats:sub><jats:italic>t<\/jats:italic><\/jats:sub>\u2009=\u20090.55). The successful fabrication of a tiny intravascular photoacoustic probe, with a 1\u2009mm outside diameter, is achieved using a single crystal with a thickness of around 60\u2009\u03bcm, in combination with a 200\u2009\u03bcm core multimode fiber. Wire phantom photoacoustic images show that the axial resolution and lateral resolution of the single crystal based probe are 60 and 220\u2009\u03bcm, respectively. In addition, intravascular photoacoustic imaging of the atherosclerotic lesion of a human artery is presented. In the time-domain and frequency-domain images, calcified regions are clearly distinguishable from surrounding tissue. These interesting results demonstrate that KNN-based lead-free piezoelectric single crystals are a promising candidate to substitute for lead-based piezoelectric materials for photoacoustic imaging in the future.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1038\/srep39679","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2016,12,21]],"date-time":"2016-12-21T10:10:00Z","timestamp":1482315000000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":45,"title":["New Potassium Sodium Niobate Single Crystal with Thickness-independent High-performance for Photoacoustic Angiography of Atherosclerotic Lesion"],"prefix":"10.1038","volume":"6","author":[{"given":"Benpeng","family":"Zhu","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yuhang","family":"Zhu","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Jie","family":"Yang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Jun","family":"Ou-Yang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Xiaofei","family":"Yang","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Yongxiang","family":"Li","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Wei","family":"Wei","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2016,12,21]]},"reference":[{"key":"BFsrep39679_CR1","unstructured":"\u201cNational Heart and Blood Institute,\u201d National Heart Lung and Blood Institute, What is atherosclerosis? available at http:\/\/www.nhlbi.nih.gov\/health\/health-topics\/topics\/atherosclerosis\/ (19 May 2013) ."},{"key":"BFsrep39679_CR2","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","first-page":"681","DOI":"10.1038\/nrcardio.2009.165","volume":"6","author":"N Alexopoulos","year":"2009","unstructured":"Alexopoulos, N. & Raggi, P. 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