Piezoelectricity of Sm-doped Pb(Zn1/3Nb2/3)O3–PbTiO3 single crystals by enhancement of local disorder polarization

Abstract

Relaxor-based ferroelectrics are a kind of ideal material, which are widely applied in transducers, medical ultrasound probes, sensors and a series of electromechanical instruments. Rare dopants can enhance the piezoresponse by introducing local structural heterogeneity. However, the origination of the giant piezoresponse is still controversial due that the instability of polarization results from the shift of phase transition temperature and component inconsistency. Herein, we grew high homogeneity Sm-doped Pb(Zn1/3Nb2/3)O3–5%PbTiO3 (Sm-PZNT) single crystals, which the d33 values is of ∼3200 pC/N and variation of phase transition temperatures is less than 7 K. The local polarization is characterized by atomic-scale level transmission microscopy (HRTEM). The macro-irregular ferroelectric domain is observed by piezoforce microscopy (PFM). These results identify that the Sm3+ dopant enhances the local structural heterogeneity and improves the piezoelectric properties of PZNT with slightly effect on phase transition temperatures. These results pave the way towards a new generation of high-performance relaxor ferroelectrics design.