Effect of texture on the electrical and electrocaloric properties of 0.90Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-0.10PbTiO3 relaxor ceramics

Functional properties of ferroelectric compositions depend strongly on the type of stable crystalline phase at a given temperature and texturing. In addition to defining a governing crystallographic axis among the grains with respect to a global reference axis, texturing in these systems is also often meant to imply the relationship between an external applied field and the polar axis. Here, we synthesize randomly oriented and 001(pc) textured 0.90Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O-3-0.10PbTiO(3) solid solutions that fall into the relaxor category. A >95% degree of 001(pc) texturing was achieved by the use of single crystal BaTiO3 template crystallites whose volume fraction does not exceed 5% of the entire sample volume. Electrical measurements made on random and textured samples reveal the impact of texture on the hysteresis and the dielectric response. A Curie-Weiss analysis of the temperature dependent dielectric data shows the degree of relaxor behavior in random and textured samples. As similar compositions have recently been getting interest for electrothermal management applications, we compute the electrocaloric (EC) response of the random and textured samples using indirect methods followed by an estimation of the EC response with a subsequent thermodynamic analysis to shed light on the effect of texture on the observed differences between the textured and the random oriented samples. We finally compare and contrast on the desirability of texturing in these systems for use as EC components for thermal management applications.