Poling lead zirconate titanate ceramics with the assistance of stress

Electrical poling is a very important process for ferroelectrics before exploiting their piezoelectric properties. However, difficulties are encountered in poling ferroelectrics with a high coercive electric field. Here, we report a method to pole ferroelectric ceramics by firstly applying uniaxial stress (US) parallel to the direct current poling electric field (DC), then applying the DC after the US unloading, and lastly applying biaxial transverse compressive stresses (BTCS) with the DC hold. Both of the calculation and experiment results demonstrate that the proposed method allows a significant decrease in the electric field necessary for poling. The obtained d33 of the specimens poled by the proposed method at electric field of 1.25Ec is close to the same material poled at high temperature. The proposed method is thought to be possible to offer solution to ferroelectrics that are hard to be poled, e.g., high-temperature ferroelectric ceramics.