Textured PMN–PT and PMN–PZT

A promising way to improve the performance of piezoelectric ceramics is grain orientation by templated grain growth. In this work lead-based piezoelectric ceramics Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)0.68Ti0.32O3 (PMN–32PT) and Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)0.42(Ti0.638Zr0.362)0.58O3 (PMN–37PT–21PZ) ceramics were textured via templated grain growth process. For texturization (001)-oriented BaTiO3 (BT) platelets (approximately 10 μm × 10 μm × 2 μm) were utilized as templates. The texturized ceramics were accomplished by aligning the templates by tape casting. The template growth into the matrix resulted in textured ceramics with Lotgering factors between 0.94 and 0.99 for both compositions. Consequences of the texture are enhanced dielectric and piezoelectric properties. Unipolar strain-field measurements of textured ceramics showed 0.25% strain s33 at 3 kV/mm. Large signal d33* of up to 878 pm/V were determined directly from strain measurements. Compared with randomly oriented ceramics in texturized samples unipolar strain s33 and large signal d33* was enhanced by a factor of up to 1.8.