Residual tensile stresses and piezoelectric properties in BiFeO3-Bi(Zn1/2Ti1/2)O3-PbTiO3 ternary solid solution perovskite ceramics

For low dielectric loss perovskite-structured (1-x-y)BiFeO3-xBi(Zn1/2Ti1/2)O3-yPbTiO3 (BF-BZT-PT) (x = 0.04-0.15 and y = 0.15-0.26) ceramics in rhombohedral/tetragonal coexistent phase, structural phase transitions were studied using differential thermal analyzer combined with temperature-dependent dielectric measurement. Two lattice structural phase transitions are disclosed in various BF-BZT-PT perovskites, which is different from its membership of BiFeO3 exhibiting just one lattice structural phase transition at Curie temperature TC= 830oC. Consequently, residual internal tensile stresses were revealed experimentally through XRD measurements on ceramic pellets and counterpart powders, which are reasonably attributed to special structural phase transition sequence of BF-BZT-PT solid solution perovskites. Low piezoresponse was observed and argued extrinsically resulting from residual tensile stresses pinning ferroelectric polarization switching. Post-annealing and subsequent quenching was found effective for eliminating residual internal stresses in those BZT-less ceramics, and good piezoelectric property of d33 ≥ 28 pC/N obtained for 0.70BF-0.08BZT-0.22PT and 0.05 wt% MnO2-doped 0.70BF-0.04BZT-0.26PT ceramics with TC ≥ 640oC, while it seemed no effective for those BZT-rich BF-BZT-PT ceramics with x = 0.14 and 0.15 studied here.