Temperature dependence of high field characteristics in PMN-PT-BT ceramics containing chemical additives

A chemical additive method was used to modify the composition and resultant properties of a commercially available 0.96(0.91Pb(Mg_1/3Nb_2/3)O₃ - 0.09PbTiO₃) - 0.04 BaTiO₃ (PMN-PT-BT) ceramic. Without an additional ball-mixing process, several combinations of minor additives such as Fe, Ba, Sr, Zn and Ti were incorporated by the chemical method. Weak- and high-field characteristics including dielectric properties, induced strain and polarization, and associated hystereses were evaluated for the samples sintered at 1200°C for 4 hrs. All properties were found to depend on the chemical additives and temperature. Especially, the temperature dependence of high-field characteristics revealed different behavior from that reported for conventionally-prepared samples. For example, the samples containing 0.5 wt% SrO, 0.5 wt% ZnO, and 0.5wt% TiO₂ did not exhibit a transition to piezoelectric behavior at the temperature expected from the dielectric measurements. Overall, the coating process has been successfully used to modify, and in some cases, enhance the high-field characteristics of PMN-based ceramics for electromechanical uses.