Practical high-performance lead-free piezoelectrics: structural flexibility beyond utilizing multiphase coexistence

Abstract
Due to growing concern for the environment and human health, searching for high-performance lead-free piezoceramics has been a hot topic of scientific and industrial research. Despite the significant progress achieved toward enhancing piezoelectricity, further efforts should be devoted to the synergistic improvement of piezoelectricity and its thermal stability. This study provides new insight into these topics. A new KNN-based lead-free ceramic material is presented, which features a large piezoelectric coefficient (d33) exceeding 500 pC/N and a high Curie temperature (Tc) of  ∼200°C. The superior piezoelectric response strongly relies on the increased composition-induced structural flexibility due to lattice softening and decreased unit cell distortion. In contrast to piezoelectricity anomalies induced via polymorphic transition, this piezoelectricity enhancement is effective within a broad temperature range rather than a specific small range. In particular, a hierarchical domain architecture composed of nano-sized domains along the submicron domains was detected in this material system, which further contributes to the high piezoelectricity. © C TheAuthor(s) 2019. Published by OxfordUniversity Press on behalf of China Science Publishing&Media Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Media Ltd. (Science Press).
Description
Keywords
Environment, Humans, Piezoelectricity, Ceramics, Temperature range, Materials, Lead, Potassium
Citation
Liu, Q., Zhang, Y., Gao, J., Zhou, Z., Yang, D., Lee, K.-Y., Studer, A., Hinterstein, M., Wang, K., Zhang, X., Li, L., & Li, J.-F. (2019). Practical high-performance lead-free piezoelectrics: structural flexibility beyond utilizing multiphase coexistence. National Science Review, 7(2), 355-365. doi:10.1093/nsr/nwz167
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