Piezoelectric properties and temperature stability of Mn-doped Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)-PbZrO3-PbTiO3 textured ceramics

In this letter, we report the electromechanical properties of textured 0.4Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3) O-3-0.25PbZrO(3)-0.35PbTiO(3) (PMN-PZT) composition which has relatively high rhombohedral to tetragonal (R-T) transition temperature (TR-T of 160 degrees C) and Curie temperature (T-C of 234 degrees C) and explore the effect of Mn-doping on this composition. It was found that MnO2-doped textured PMN-PZT ceramics with 5 vol.% BaTiO3 template (T-5BT) exhibited inferior temperature stability. The coupling factor (k(31)) of T-5BT ceramic started to degrade from 75 degrees C while the random counterpart showed a very stable tendency up to 180 degrees C. This degradation was associated with the "interface region" formed in the vicinity of BT template. MnO2 doped PMN-PZT ceramics textured with 3 vol.% BT and subsequently poled at 140 degrees C (T-3BT140) exhibited very stable and high k(31) (>0.53) in a wide temperature range from room temperature to 130 degrees C through reduction in the interface region volume. Further, the T-3BT140 ceramic exhibited excellent hard and soft combinatory piezoelectric properties of d(33) = 720 pC/N, k(31) = 0.53, Q(m) = 403, delta = 0.3% which are very promising for high power and magnetoelectric applications. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.3698157]