Effects of cerium on structures and electrical properties of (Nb, Ta) modified Bi₄Ti₃O₁₂ piezoelectric ceramics

Abstract

Bi 4 Ti 3 O 12 high-temperature piezoelectric ceramics composed of 0.03 mol (Nb, Ta) 5+ substituting B site and x mol CeO 2 (x = 0-0.05, abbreviated as BCTNT100x) substituting A site were synthesized by the conventional solid-state reaction method. The effects of Ce additive on the structures and electrical properties of resulting Bi 4 Ti 3 O 12 -based ceramics were systematically investigated. In-situ temperature-dependent X-ray diffraction (XRD) confirmed that the phase structure of BCTNT100x ceramics change from orthorhombic structure to tetragonal structure as temperature increased. The ceramics at Ce content x = 0.03 illustrated optimal performances with superior piezoelectric constant (d 33 = 36.5 pC/N), high Curie temperature (T C = 649 • C), and large remanent polarization (2P r = 21.6 μC/cm 2 ). BCTNT3 ceramics also possessed high d 33 of 32.5 pC/N at an annealing temperature of 600 • C, with electrical resistivity preserved at 10 6 Ω cm at 500 • C. These results demonstrate that BCTNT100x ceramics can be used as high-temperature piezoelectric devices.

Realizing Super‐High Piezoelectricity and Excellent Fatigue Resistance in Domain‐Engineered Bismuth Titanate Ferroelectrics

“…Interestingly, the BCTWN‐1.75 ceramics exhibits a larger d 33 of more than 34 pC N −1 , i.e., retaining over 88% of its room temperature value as the temperature exceeds 500 °C, suggesting good thermal stability and beneficial to the high‐temperature applications. Moreover, it is clear that the d 33 of BCTWN ceramics in this work is superior compared with other reported BIT‐based ceramics, [ 6,7d,8–12,15–18,31,33 ] together with a higher T c (Figure 2f). We believe this will be a breakthrough in the performance optimization of BIT piezoelectric ceramics, and the BCTWC ceramics with such super‐high piezoelectric performance shed great potential to meet next‐generation high‐sensitivity and light‐weight requirements in high‐temperature applications.…”

“…Similar findings have been revealed in other BIT-based piezoelectric ceramic systems. [18,30,32] Figure 2d shows the piezoelectric properties of BCTWN ceramics at room temperature. One can see that the piezoelectric coefficient (d 33 ) is increased first and then decreased with the increase of doping content, suggesting that the dopants could significantly alter the piezoelectric properties.…”

“…In addition, it has been proved that Ce 4+ ‐modified dual‐ion co‐doped BIT ceramic system exhibits a significant evolution of ferroelectric domain configuration with dopants, enabling further enhancing piezoelectric performance with good temperature stability. [ 18 ] Moreover, excellent piezoelectric performance has been successively reported in Ce, W, Nb multi‐ion co‐doped BIT‐based ceramics via tailoring sintering temperatures and domain engineering. [ 7e,19 ] They attribute the enhanced performance to the significant evolutions of ferroelectric domains in ceramics by the introduction of dopants.…”