Giant strain with ultra-low hysteresis and high temperature stability in grain oriented lead-free K(0.5)Bi(0.5)TiO(3)-BaTiO(3)-Na(0.5)Bi(0.5)TiO(3) piezoelectric materials

We synthesized grain-oriented lead-free piezoelectric materials in (K(0.5)Bi(0.5)TiO(3)-BaTiO(3)-xNa(0.5)Bi(0.5)TiO(3) (KBT-BT-NBT) system with high degree of texturing along the [001]c (c-cubic) crystallographic orientation. We demonstrate giant field induced strain (~0.48%) with an ultra-low hysteresis along with enhanced piezoelectric response (d(33) ~ 190pC/N) and high temperature stability (~160°C). Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM) results demonstrate smaller size highly ordered domain structure in grain-oriented specimen relative to the conventional polycrystalline ceramics. The grain oriented specimens exhibited a high degree of non-180° domain switching, in comparison to the randomly axed ones. These results indicate the effective solution to the lead-free piezoelectric materials.