Self‐poling and electromechanical response of crystallographically textured PMN‐32PT prepared by templated grain growth

Abstract

Crystallographic texturing of ferroelectrics is known to improve the piezoelectrics response due to the alignment of optimal grain orientations in polycrystalline materials. Using high-energy x-ray diffraction, a ferroelastic self-poling effect was observed in crystallographically textured 0.68 Pb(Mg 1/3 Nb 2/3 )O 3 − 0.32PbTiO 3 ceramic. It is shown that the BaTiO 3 platelet templates used to induce crystallographic texture imposed a biaxial strain causing ferroelastic domains to re-orient parallel to the template plate normal. In-situ high-energy x-ray diffraction was then used to characterize the response mechanisms of the material with applied electric fields. The textured ceramic produced a (111) lattice strain of 0.13% in the remanent state, and a 0.16% (111) unipolar lattice strain at 2 kV/mm while the untextured ceramic had a higher (111) lattice strain of 0.18% in the remanent state and a smaller (111) unipolar lattice strain at 2 kV/mm of 0.096%. This contrast in the strain magnitudes can be linked to the self-poling effect. A strain mechanism incorporating the self-poling effect is proposed, furthering our understanding of how crystallographic texture impacts the piezoelectric properties and providing a pathway for engineering the self-poling effect to further enhance material response.