Building high transduction coefficient BiScO3–PbTiO3 piezoceramic and its power generation characteristics

Improving the power generation characteristics of piezoelectric energy harvesters requires the construction of piezoelectric ceramics with high transduction coefficient (d33 × g33), which remains a big challenge. In this paper, guided by piezoelectric energy harvester applications, the relationship between the composition, microstructure and transduction coefficient of (1 − x)BiScO3–xPbTiO3 material is systematically studied. The results demonstrated that the sample with a composition of x = 0.64 not only has a high Curie temperature (426 °C) which is beneficial to improve the working stability of the device, but also has a very high d33 × g33 value (15,110 × 10−15 m2/N), which is significantly superior to the commercial PZT system. Excellent electrical performance can be attributed to the fact that the composition of x = 0.64 located near MPB has a very high piezoelectric charge constant (505 pC/N) at the same time with moderate dielectric constant (1907). The cantilever-type energy harvester made of optimized composition generated a high output power density of 2.93 μW/mm3 at room temperature, which charged a commercial 47 μF electrolytic capacitor to 22 V in just 220 s and lighted up 72 LEDs for 0.1~0.2 s. Further, x = 0.64 harvester exhibited a large output voltage of 2.76 V even at 350 °C, suggesting its potential use for powering high temperature wireless sensors.