Improved densification behavior and energy harvesting properties of low-temperature sintered (Ba, Ca)(Zr, Ti)O3 piezoceramics with a CuO additive

Piezoelectric energy harvesting has recently attracted substantial interest because of its ability to provide sustainable power for devices that consume very small amounts of energy. In this work, we propose a CuO-doping strategy to develop environmentally friendly (Ba, Ca)(Zr, Ti)O-3 (BCZT) piezoelectric energy harvesters with both low sintering temperatures and excellent power generation performance. The CuO dopant greatly promoted the densification behavior of BCZT ceramics, yielding a densified and fine-grained microstructure at a sintering temperature reduced by 125 degrees C compared to that of undoped BCZT. Moreover, CuO addition substantially reduced the domain size compared to that of the undoped BCZT and thus facilitated domain switching in the ceramics. While maintaining the Curie temperature (T-c) at similar to 120 degrees C, 0.50 mol% CuO-doped ceramics exhibited significantly enhanced electromechanical properties with a figure of merit d(33) x g(33) of 6661 x 10(-15) m(2)/N, high-field piezoelectric constant d(33)* of 873 pm/V, electromechanical coupling factor k(p) of 0.53 and energy conversion efficiency eta of 97%. A high power density of 1.8 mu W/mm(3), which corresponds to a similar to 360% improvement relative to that of the undoped BCZT, was achieved from 0.50 mol% CuO-doped BCZT energy harvesters at 10 m/s(2) acceleration. These findings suggest the tremendous potential of CuO-doped (Ba, Ca)(Zr, Ti)O-3 piezoceramics in high-power-density energy harvesting applications.