Effects of excess Bi2O3 on grain orientation and electrical properties of CaBi4Ti4O15 ceramics

A CaBi4Ti4O15 (CBTO) ceramic in which the Bi2O3 concentration was controlled from 0 to 10 wt% was fabricated using a solid-state reaction method. Structural analysis by field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) indicated differences in the preferred grain orientation and size of the plate-like grains according to the Bi2O3 concentration. The orientation of plate-like grains was also found to vary with the Bi2O3 concentration. There was no noticeable change trend of dielectric properties with different Bi2O3 concentrations. Relatively low dielectric constants (about 135) were exhibited by the CBTO ceramic with 1 wt% Bi2O3 and CBTO ceramic with 10 wt% Bi2O3 only, and similar values (about 150) were exhibited by the other ceramics. The dielectric loss exhibited a low value in the range of 0.01-0.09 for all samples (frequency range of 1-100 kHz). Regarding the ratio changes of the piezoelectric coefficient (d(33)) and the ratio of a-axis orientation of plate-like grains, the trends of these two values were shown to be similar. These results suggest that the addition of Bi2O3 greatly influences the microstructure of CBTO ceramics, including the grain size and orientation of plate-like grains. In particular, the change in the preferred grain orientation is closely related to the change in the piezoelectric properties. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.