• Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology
• /
• v.25 no.4
• /
• pp.160-165
• /
• 2015

Lead-free piezoelectric materials have been actively studied to substitute for conventional PZT based solid solution, $Pb(Zr_xTi_{1-x}O_3)$, which occurs unavoidable PbO during the sintering process. Among them, Bismuth Sodium Titanate, $Na_{0.5}Bi_{0.5}TiO_3$ (abbreviated as NBT) based solid solution is attracted for the one of excellent candidates which shows the strong ferroelectricity, Curie temperature (Tc), remnant polarization (Pr) and coercive field (Ec). Especially, the solid solution of rhombohedral phase NBT with tetragonal perovskite phase has a rhombohedral - tetragonal morphotropic phase boundary. Modified NBT with tetragonal perovskite at the region of MPB can be applied for high frequency ultrasonic application because of not only its low permittivity, high electrocoupling factor and high mechanical strength, but also effective piezoelectric activity by poling. In this study, solid state ceramic processing of NBT and modified NBT, $(Na_{0.5}Bi_{0.5})_{0.93}Ba_{0.7}TiO_3$ (abbreviated as NBT-7BT), at the region of MPB using 7 % $BaTiO_3$ as a tetragonal perovskite was introduced and the structure between NBT and NBT-7BT were analyzed using rietveld refinement. Also, the ferroelectric and piezoelectric properties of NBT-7BT such as permittivity, piezoelectric constant, polarization hysteresis and strain hysteresis loop were compared with those of pure NBT.