Enhanced piezoelectricity and nature of electric-field induced structural phase transformation in textured lead-free piezoelectric Na0.5Bi0.5TiO3-BaTiO3 ceramics

This letter provides a comparative description of the properties of textured and randomly oriented poly-crystalline lead-free piezoelectric 0.93(Na0.5Bi0.5TiO3)-0.07BaTiO(3) (NBT-BT) ceramics. A high longitudinal piezoelectric constant of (d(33)) similar to 322 pC/N was obtained in (001)(PC) textured NBT-7BT ceramics, which is almost similar to 2x times the d(33) coefficient reported for randomly oriented ceramics of the same composition. In situ neutron diffraction experiments revealed that characteristically different structural responses are induced in textured and randomly oriented NBT-BT ceramics upon application of electric fields (E), which are likely related to the varying coherence lengths of polar nanoregions and internal stresses induced by domain switching. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4709404]