A lead-free (K,Na)NbO3-based piezoelectric ceramic is
textured along the (001) direction using the NaNbO3 (NN)
seeds. The composition 0.96(K0.5Na0.5)(Nb0.965Sb0.035)O3–0.01CaZrO3–0.03(Bi0.5K0.5)HfO3 (KNN) is found to provide an excellent combination of electromechanical
coefficients at room temperature. The textured composition with 5
wt % NN template (KNN-5NN) exhibits considerably improved electromechanical
coefficients, d
33 ∼ 590 pC/N, k
31 ∼ 0.46, and d
31 ∼ 215 ×10–12 C/N, at room
temperature. A flexible piezoelectric energy harvester (F-PEH) is
fabricated using the textured KNN-5NN ceramic and tested under cyclic
force. F-PEH exhibits enhanced output voltage (V
oc ∼ 25 V), current (I ∼ 0.4
μA), and power density (P
D ∼
5.5 mW/m2) (R
L of 10 MΩ)
in the off-resonance frequency regime. In comparison to the random
ceramic KNN-0NN-based F-PEH (V
oc ∼
8 V and I ∼ 0.1 μA), the textured F-PEH
significantly outperformed energy harvesting capability due to the
large figure-of-merit value (d
31 × g
31) ∼ 3354 ×10–15 m3/J. This work provides a methodology for texturing
lead-free materials and further implementing them in flexible energy
harvesting devices and sensors.