Abstract
Legislation to replace lead-based ferroelectric ceramics for electromechanical transducers (commonly made of lead titanate-zirconate (PZT)) started in Europe shortly before the year 2000 in the context of elimination of toxic substances from electric and electronic equipment. From that date there has been a large, worldwide research effort to develop new ecological, lead-free compositions that can substitute PZT. Some issues involved in this effort will be reviewed here, from the synthesis procedures to functional properties and trends. New properties on lead-free systems that surpass those of PZT (bismuth sodium titanates for actuators) and enhanced properties of other compositions in which lead-free materials are already at work in devices will be analyzed in this chapter. Present limits of well-known lead-free materials (barium titanate, Aurivillius-type structure compounds, sodium potassium niobate, bismuth sodium titanate, and barium calcium titanate-zirconate) will be summarized, and new and recently studied compositions based on materials with high spontaneous polarization will be considered as future lead-free alternatives.
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