Soft and hybrid-doped Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 ceramics under stress, electric field, and temperature loading.

We investigated the influence of uniaxial pressure (0-1000 bars) applied parallelly or perpendicularly to the ac or dc electric field (in a one-dimensional or two-dimensional manner) on dielectric and ferroelectric properties of selected soft and hybrid-doped PZT ceramics (1 mol. % Gd, 1 mol. % La and 1 mol. % (La+Fe)-doped Pb(Zr0.54Ti0.46) O3). Applying uniaxial pressure leads to a reduction of the peak intensity of the electric permittivity (&eh;), of the frequency dispersion, and of the dielectric hysteresis. The peak intensity of &eh; becomes diffused and shifts to a higher temperatures with increasing pressure. Simultaneous application of uniaxial pressure and dc electric field (perpendicular to each other) in the poling process implies in improvement of the ferroelectric properties, indicating a new possibility for poling materials with a high coercive field and/or high electric conductivity. It was also found that simultaneous application of uniaxial pressure and dc electric field (perpendicular to each other) allowed observation of the space charge in the depolarization process. The electrostrictive coefficient Q11 and differential permittivity were evaluated from obtained data. Our results show that applying uniaxial pressure induces similar effects as increasing the Ti-ion concentration in the PZT system. We interpreted our results based on the Cochran soft-mode and domain switching processes under the action of pressure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]