Large electrostrictive effect in ternary Bi0.5Na0.5TiO3-based solid solutions

In the present work, a ternary solid solution (0.935-x)Bi0.5Na0.5TiO3-0.065BaTiO3-xSrTiO3 (BNBST, BNBSTx) was designed and fabricated using the traditional solid state reaction method. A morphotropic phase boundary between the ferroelectric long-range-order and relaxor pseudocubic phases was determined around x of 0.22 for poled solid solutions. The further increase of SrTiO3 substitution turned the depolarization temperature Td to below ambient temperature and led to a sharp decrease in the remnant polarization Pr and quasi-static piezoelectric constant d33. A large electrostrictive coefficient Q of 0.026 m4 C−2 was obtained for BNBST0.30, which was entirely comparable to the well-known electrostrictive material Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3, recently reported Bi0.5Na0.5TiO3-BaTiO3-K0.5Na0.5NbO3, and Bi0.5Na0.5TiO3-BaTiO3-KNbO3. Under a moderate electric field of 4 kV/mm, the electrostrictive strain can reach as high as ∼0.11%. Furthermore, the electric-field-induced strain exhibited weak temperature-dependent behavi...