Simultaneously enhanced piezoelectricity and curie temperature in BiFeO3-based high temperature piezoelectrics

Abstract We report the structure, dielectric, ferroelectric and piezoelectric properties of Cr-Mn co-doped (1-y)BiFe1-xCrxO3-yBaTi1-xMnxO3 (0≤x≤0.04, 0.2≤y≤0.27) ceramics. By varying both x and y, a series of samples near morphotropic phase boundaries exhibiting both high ferroelectric Curie temperature TC (∼580−643 °C) and relatively large piezoelectric constant d33 are constructed. Especially, the sample with y = 0.24 and x = 0.02 is found to show coexistence of high depolarization temperature Td (∼551 °C) and relatively large d33∼116 pC/N, superior to most of those of BiFeO3 based high-temperature piezoceramics reported previously. The enhanced ferroelectric TC in the Cr-Mn modified samples can be ascribed to the combined effects of large lattice distortion and high tetragonal phase content. These results demonstrate that constructing morphotropic phase boundaries via considering simultaneously the role of lattice distortion might be effective route to realize high-temperature and high piezoelectricity in BiFeO3-based systems.