Achieving both high electromechanical properties and temperature stability in textured PMN-PT ceramics

Textured piezoelectric ceramics, such as textured Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O-3-PbTiO3 (PMN-PT) ceramics, have attracted considerable attention from both academia and industry, as they possess crystal-like piezoelectric properties, high composition homogeneity, and low manufacturing cost. However, the main difficulty with the textured piezoelectric ceramics is the presence of BaTiO3 (BT) templates, which greatly reduces their piezoelectricity and phase transition temperature. Thus, it is highly recommended to fabricate textured piezoelectric ceramics using as few templates as possible. Here, we successfully fabricated high-quality -textured PMN-28PT ceramics (texturing degree of 99%) by using an extremely small amount of BT templates (1 vol.%) with the help of CuO/B2O3 sintering aids. The textured PMN-28PT ceramic exhibits 80% piezoelectric coefficient (d(33) similar to 1200 pC/N), 96% electromechanical coefficient (k(33) similar to 88%) and the same temperature stability (T-rt similar to 100, T-c similar to 150 degrees C) when compared to its single crystal counterpart. In addition, by using an alternating current electric field poling (AC-poling), the piezoelectric coefficient d(33) and dielectric permittivity epsilon(33) of the textured PMN-28PT ceramics were further enhanced around 5-8%. It is believed that the advantages of high electromechanical properties, low cost, and easy mass production of textured PMN-28PT ceramic will make it a promising candidate for advanced electromechanical devices.