The influence of the sintering temperature on the structure and on the hysteresis loops of Fe3+ doped Pb(ZrxTi1-x)O3 system has been investigated. Three compositions have been selected in the following mode: one in rhombohedral region, one in MPB region and one in tetragonal region have been obtained by solid state reaction technique. Sintering has been carried out at 12000C and 12500C respectively. The nature of the phases has been investigated in detail using X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD). All the sintered samples reveal a perovskite type structure. The surfaces have been lapped and metalized in order to obtaine the hysteresis loops at room temperature. The results showed a similar behaviour with “hard” PZT ceramics.

In this paper, some compositions described by the general formula Pb(ZrxTi1-x)0.99Fe0.01O3 have been considered and investigated. The compositions considered have been obtained by solid state reaction technique, where x corresponds to 0.42, 0.52 and 0.58. Sintering has been performed for 2 hours at temperatures between 1100oC and 1250oC. The influence of the sintering temperature on the microstructure and on the hysteresis loops of Fe3+ doped Pb(ZrxTi1-x)O3 system has been investigated. The crystallographic phase and microstucture of the sintered compositions have been studied in detail using X-ray diffraction analysis (XRD) and Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). The experimental results obtained by XRD have revealed that all the sintered samples have a perovskite structure. In order to correlate the behavior of the sintered materials to their microscopic structure, the domain structures have been defined by SEM. The dielectric properties, as relative dielectric permittivity (εr) and dielectric loss (tan δ) have been measured. The hysteresis loops at room temperature of all un-poled sintered compositions reveal a similar behaviour with “hard” PZT ceramics. The piezoelectric properties like electromechanical coupling factor (kp) have been investigated after polarization.

No abstract