Enhanced texture evolution and piezoelectric properties in CuO-doped Pb(In1/2Nb1/2)O3-Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-PbTiO3 grain-oriented ceramics

Abstract

In this work, both crystallographic texture and doping engineering strategies were integrated to develop relaxor-PbTiO3 (PT) based ternary ferroelectric ceramics with enhanced texture evolution and superior electromechanical properties. CuO-doped Pb(In1/2Nb1/2)O3-Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-PbTiO3 (PIN-PMN-PT) piezoelectric ceramics with [001]c texture fraction ≥97% were synthesized by templated grain growth. The addition of CuO significantly promotes densification and oriented grain growth in the templated ceramics, leading to full texture development at dramatically reduced times and temperatures. Moreover, the CuO dopant remarkably enhances the piezoelectric properties of the textured ceramics while maintaining high phase transition temperatures and large coercive fields. Doping 0.125 wt. % CuO yields the electromechanical properties of d33 = 927 pC/N, d33* = 1510 pm/V, g33 = 43.2 × 10−3 Vm/N, Kp = 0.87, Ec=8.8 kV/cm, and tan δ = 1.3%, which are the best values reported so far in PIN-PMN-PT based ceramics. The high piezoelectric coefficient is mainly from the reversible piezoelectric response, with the irreversible contribution being on the order of 13.1%. We believe that this work not only facilitates closing the performance gap between ceramics and single crystals but also can expand relaxor-PT based piezoelectric application fields.

Targeted doping builds a high energy density composite piezoceramics for energy harvesting

“…In order to further analyze the relationship between the piezoelectric property and the material structure, the intrinsic contributions from the lattice distortion and the extrinsic contributions from the domain wall motion are discussed separately. For the intrinsic contributions, the conventional Landau‐Devonshire relation has been used for analysis as it illuminates the relationships among the piezoelectric, dielectric, and ferroelectric properties of a material …”

Electric field induced splitting of the preferred orientation in PMN‐PT textured ceramics

“…Crystallographic texturing offers to resolve these limitations. In particular, highly textured relaxor‐xPT ceramics have been developed by Messing and coworkers . The high field piezoelectric properties of these textured ceramics approach that of PMN‐xPT single crystals (~1600 pC/N) .…”

“…It is often used to optimize anisotropy and properties. For PMN‐PT, this preferred orientation is determined by templated grain growth (TGG) using a low‐volume fraction loading of small BaTiO 3 (BT) or (Na 1/2 Bi 1/2 )TiO 3 (NBT) microplatelets . We refer to this direction as out‐of‐plane (OP).…”

Templated grain growth of high coercive field CuO‐doped textured PYN‐PMN‐PT ceramics

“…Texturing ceramics through templated grain growth (TGG) is a substantially more cost‐effective approach than single crystal growth for the production of high‐performance piezoelectric materials 6‐8 . The TGG process allows for substantially improved compositional control relative to single crystal growth because growth retains the chemical homogeneity of the greenbody 6 .…”

“…This benefit, combined with the scalability of tape casting, enables high‐volume production of compositionally uniform parts of various sizes and shapes 7 . Textured PIN‐PMN‐PT and PMN‐PZT ceramics, templated with barium titanate platelets, show improved piezoelectric properties (600‐850 pC/N) compared to their random counterparts (400‐550 pC/N) 8‐11 . While texturing improves the piezoelectric properties, current generation textured ceramics are limited by the same low E c (~7‐8 kV/cm), T r‐t (100‐120°C), and low T C ’s (150‐215°C) as the single crystal analogs because these properties are dominated by material composition rather the final microstructure 8,11 …”