Abstract
Due to excellent piezoelectric properties, lead-based ferroelectric materials and more particularly the Pb(Zr, Ti)O3 (PZT) are widely used in actuators, sensors and transducers. However, these ceramics contain more than 60% PbO. Assuming the toxicity of lead oxide, many efforts have been done to develop environmentally friendly and non-hazardous materials. In this paper, potassium-sodium Niobate (KNN) ceramics as the most important family of lead free piezoceramics were fabricated by a solid-state reaction route and synthesis process, sintering and electrical properties of these ceramics were investigated. Characterization of synthesized powders by XRD, DTA/TGA and FTIR revealed that calcination of raw materials at 950˚C leads to homogeneous and single-phase KNN powders. At optimum sintering temperature of 1115˚C, the desirable values of 313, 88pC/N and 18µC/cm2 were obtained for dielectric constant (εr), piezoelectric charge coefficient (d33) and remnant polarization (Pr), respectively.
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