Enhancing the Temperature Stability of 0.42PNN-0.21PZ-0.37PT Ceramics through Texture Engineering

Although the MPB composition 0.42PNN-0.21PZ-0.37PT ceramic has high piezoelectric properties, its temperature stability at room temperature is rather poor due to the low phase-transition temperature. By texture engineering using BaTiO₃ (BT) as the template, the temperature stability of this material can be greatly improved. In the temperature range from room temperature up to 140 °C, the high effective piezoelectric strain constant d₃₃* of 0.42PNN-0.21PZ-0.37PT-3BT only changed by 4.9% from 1278 to 1215 pm/V, while the d₃₃* of the nontextured counterpart changed by 46.7% from the room temperature value of 920 pm/V with the maximum deviation to 1350 pm/V at 80 °C. In addition, the textured ceramic has higher piezoelectric properties, lower dielectric loss, and slightly higher coercive field. The room-temperature figure-of-merit d₃₃ × g₃₃ for PNN-PZT-2BT is increased by as much as 42% compared with the nontextured counterpart. Our results demonstrated that texture engineering is an effective way to improve the temperature stability of the MPB composition piezoceramics.