Enhanced dielectric and piezoelectric properties of manganese-doped Pb(In1/2Nb1/2)O3-Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-PbTiO3 single crystals by alternating current poling

Abstract

Alternating current poling (ACP) was performed on Gen III relaxor-PT Mn-doped Pb(In1/2Nb1/2)O3-Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-PbTiO3 (Mn: PIN-PMN-PT) single crystals with the poling direction of [001]. Experimental results proved that ACP could bring property enhancement to both k31 and k33 mode crystals. Compared to those from traditional direct current poling (DCP), ACP with the optimized conditions (20 kV/cm, 0.1 Hz, and 20 cycles) enhanced the dielectric and piezoelectric properties of k31-mode mode crystals by more than 30%, where the enhanced free dielectric constant and piezoelectric coefficient d33 reached 5300 and 1750 pC/N, respectively. Furthermore, replacing DCP with ACP could increase the advantages of Gen III relaxor-PT. The coupling factors k31 and k33 were enhanced to 0.472 and 0.915, the mechanical quality factor Qm was enhanced by 17%, and the depoling temperature was raised by 17 °C to 123 °C. In the following mechanism study, in situ x-ray diffraction (XRD) combined with the temperature-dependent dielectric constant measurement proved the introduction of the monoclinic phases after ACP, while piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM) observation showed “2R”-like “2M” domain morphologies in ACP single crystals. Both these intrinsic and extrinsic factors are believed to be the keys to the mechanisms of property enhancement behind ACP. This study proved that ACP is an effective property enhancement method suitable for Gen III relaxor-PT single crystals and will promote its applications in high-temperature and high-power devices.