Synergy of lead vacancies and morphotropic phase boundary to promote high piezoelectricity and temperature stability of PBZTN ceramics

The flourishing development of emerging electromechanical applications has stimulated an urgent demand for ferroelectric ceramics with high piezoelectric properties and broad temperature usage range. However, it remains a challenge to simultaneously obtain good piezoelectricity and reliable temperature stability in lead zirconate titanate (PZT)-based piezoelectric ceramics. To solve this issue, a synergetic strategy was proposed to introduce lead vacancies through niobium doping and construct morphotropic phase boundary (MPB). In this work, Pb0.905Ba0.085(VPb″)0.01[(ZrxTi1-x)0.98Nb0.02]O3 (PBZTN-x) material system was designed. Good comprehensive properties (d33 = 864 pC/N, kp = 84%, TC = 201 °C) and excellent temperature stability (less than 10% variation of electrical properties from 20 °C to 160 °C) were obtained in PBZTN-0.540 ceramics. Good piezoelectricity can be attributed to high extrinsic contribution (domain wall motion) induced by Pb2+ vacancies and the existence of nano-domains emerged at MPB, while excellent temperature stability is mainly attributed to the minimized local stress in the lattice and the stable domain structure.