Perovskite Phase Formation, Phase Transition and Ferroelectric Properties of PZN-based Ceramics

Abstract

Ceramics solid solutions within the binary system of xPb(Zn1/3Nb2/3)O3???(1-x)Pb(Zr1/2Ti1/2)O3 with x = 0.1 - 0.5 were synthesized via the mixed oxide method and thecolumbite method. Phase development of calcined powders and the crystal structure ofsintered ceramics were analyzed by X-ray diffraction. Ferroelectric properties were measuredto elucidate the phase transformation and identify the impact of the processing conditions. Itis shown that there is no significant difference in Pr across the composition range. However,the coercive field Ec is well dispersed over the compositions. Compared with ceramicsprepared by the columbite method, ceramics prepared by the mixed oxide method showed alower remanent polarization Pr and a higher coercive field Ec. In addition, both X-raydiffraction and ferroelectric measurements indicated a phase transformation from atetragonal to a pseudo-cubic rhombohedral phase when the fraction of PZN was increased.The morphotropic phase boundary (MPB) is located between x = 0.2 and 0.3 according toobservations made on ceramics prepared with both method.