Temperature stability and electrical properties in La-doped KNN-based ceramics

To improve the temperature stability and electrical properties of KNN-based ceramics, we simultaneously consider the phase boundary and the addition of rare earth element (La), 0.96K0.5Na0.5Nb0.96Sb0.04O3-0.04(Bi1-xLax)0.5Na0.5ZrO3 (0 ≤ x ≤ 1.0) ceramics. More specifically, we investigate how the phase boundary and the addition of La3+ affect the phase structure, electrical properties, and temperature stability of the ceramic. We show that increasing the La3+ content leads to a change in phase structure, from a rhombohedral-tetragonal (R-T) phase coexistence to a cubic phase. More importantly, we show that the appropriate addition of La3+ (x = 0.2) can simultaneously improve the unipolar strain (from 0.127% to 0.147%) and the temperature stability (i.e., the unipolar strain of 0.147% remains unchanged when T is increased from 25 to 80°C). In addition, we find that the ceramics with x = 0.2 exhibit a large piezoelectric constant (d33) of ~430 pC/N, a high Curie temperature (TC) of ~240°C and a fatigue-free behavior (after 106 electric cycles). The enhanced electrical properties mostly originate from the easy domain switching, whereas the improved temperature stability can be attributed to the R-T phase boundary and the appropriate addition of La3+.