Enhanced texture evolution and piezoelectric properties in CuO-doped Pb(In1/2Nb1/2)O3-Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-PbTiO3 grain-oriented ceramics

Abstract

In this work, both crystallographic texture and doping engineering strategies were integrated to develop relaxor-PbTiO3 (PT) based ternary ferroelectric ceramics with enhanced texture evolution and superior electromechanical properties. CuO-doped Pb(In1/2Nb1/2)O3-Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-PbTiO3 (PIN-PMN-PT) piezoelectric ceramics with [001]c texture fraction ≥97% were synthesized by templated grain growth. The addition of CuO significantly promotes densification and oriented grain growth in the templated ceramics, leading to full texture development at dramatically reduced times and temperatures. Moreover, the CuO dopant remarkably enhances the piezoelectric properties of the textured ceramics while maintaining high phase transition temperatures and large coercive fields. Doping 0.125 wt. % CuO yields the electromechanical properties of d33 = 927 pC/N, d33* = 1510 pm/V, g33 = 43.2 × 10−3 Vm/N, Kp = 0.87, Ec=8.8 kV/cm, and tan δ = 1.3%, which are the best values reported so far in PIN-PMN-PT based ceramics. The high piezoelectric coefficient is mainly from the reversible piezoelectric response, with the irreversible contribution being on the order of 13.1%. We believe that this work not only facilitates closing the performance gap between ceramics and single crystals but also can expand relaxor-PT based piezoelectric application fields.