Enhancing piezoelectricity of low-temperature-sintered PZT–BNZ ceramics by pulse poling

To fully exploit piezoelectric performance of 2 wt% Ba(Cu_0.5Wu_0.5)O₃-doped 0.925Pb(Zr_0.5Ti_0.5)O₃–0.075(Bi_0.5Na_0.5)ZrO₃ (PZT–0.075BNZ) ceramics, a novel stepwise increase pulse poling (PP) method was proposed, and the optimization effects of PP on piezoelectric, dielectric, and ferroelectric properties, and the underlying mechanism were studied. Such method increases piezoelectric constant d₃₃ to 196 pC/N with 54% increasement and mechanical quality factor Q_m to 67 with 47% increasement as compared with the direct current poling method. The poling efficiency is also improved, where 4 PP cycles are sufficient to achieve steady piezoelectric performance. The improved piezoelectric, dielectric, and ferroelectric properties can be attributed to the decrease of point defects and formation of regular stripe-like domains, presenting wide range application prospect in increasing piezoelectric performance of lead-based piezoelectric ceramics with morphotropic phase boundary composition.