Outstanding electromechanical performance in piezoelectric ceramics via synergistic effects of defect engineering and domain miniaturization

Piezoelectric ceramics with high mechanical quality factor Qm and large piezoelectric coefficient d 33 are urgently required for advanced piezoelectric applications. However, obtaining both of these prop-erties simultaneously remains a difficult challenge due to their mutually restrictive relationship. Here 0.5Pb(Ni1/3Nb2/3)O3-0.5Pb(Zr0.3Ti0.7)O3 piezoceramic with tetragonal (T)-rich MPB is designed as a matrix to construct the defect engineering by doping low-valent Mn ions. The strong coupling of defect dipole and T-rich phase can effectively hinder the rotation of Ps, restrict domain wall motion and improve Qm. At the same time, the substituted Mn ions will introduce local random field, destroying the long-range or-dering of ferroelectric domain and reducing domain size. The miniaturized domain structure can increase poling efficiency and inhibit the reduction of d 33 . Guided by this strategy, Qm has increased by more than 10 times and d 33 has only decreased by about 25%. The optimized electromechanical performance with Qm = 822, d 33 = 502 pC/N, kp = 0.55 and tan & delta; = 0.0069 can be obtained in the present study.& COPY; 2023 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of The editorial office of Journal of Materials Science & Technology.