Fabrication and Characteristics of Small Sized PZT Powders by using a Propyl Alcohol based Sol-Gel Method

The PZT(lead, zirconium, titanium) based ceramics which, are reported to be ferroelectric materials have their important applications in the areas of surface acoustic waves (SAW), filters, infrared detectors, actuators, ferroelectric random acess memory, speakers, electronic switches etc. Moreover, these PZT materials possess the large electromechanical coupling factor, large spontaneous polarization, low dielectric loss and low internal stress etc. Hence, keeping in view the unique properties of PZT piezoelectric ceramics we also tried to synthesize indigenously the small sized PZT ceramic powder in the laboratory by using the modified sol-gel approach. In this paper, Propyl alcohol based sol-gel method was used for preparation of PZT piezoelectric ceramic. The powder obtained by this sol-gel process was calcined and sintering to reach a pyrochlore-free crystal phase. The characterization of synthesized material was carried out by the XRD analysis and the surface morphology was determined by high resolution scanning electron microscopy.