Interrelations Between Microstructure and Piezoelectric Sensitivity in Novel 0–3–0 Composites Based on 0.67Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3 − 0.33PbTiO3 Single Crystal

Abstract

This paper reports results on effective piezoelectric properties of advanced composites based on polydomain relaxor-ferroelectric single crystals of 0.67Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3 − 0.33PbTiO3. Two variants of the single crystal/porous polymer composite with 0–3–0 connectivity are proposed to study the role of microstructural factors in forming high piezoelectric sensitivity. The effective properties of the related 0–3 single crystal/polymer composite are predicted and considered to show ways of increasing the piezoelectric anisotropy and sensitivity. Examples of the volume-fraction and aspect-ratio dependences of the effective piezoelectric coefficients d 3j *, g 3j *, the hydrostatic piezoelectric coefficient gh *, and squared figures of merit d 33* g 33* and dh * gh * of composites are analysed to show in which ranges high piezoelectric sensitivity is attained. The presence of single-crystal polydomain inclusions in the porous 3–0 matrix promotes the large effective parameters (g 33* ∼ 103 mV · m/N, gh * ∼ 103 mV · m/N, d 33* g 33* ∼ 10−10 Pa−1, and dh * gh * ∼ 10−10 Pa−1), and the obvious high-performance advantage of the 0–3–0 composites is discussed taking into account features of their microstructure.