High Power Characteristics of Lead-Free Piezoelectric Ceramics.

High power characteristics of lead-free ( Bi, Na) Ti O₃ ( BNT) and Ba Ti O₃ ( BT)-based piezoceramics were investigated and compared to commercial 'hard' Pb( Zr, Ti) O₃ PZT materials. Acceptor-modified BNT and BT-based ceramics showed typical 'hardening' characteristics, exhibiting high mechanical quality factor Q_m > 800 and low dielectric loss, <0.01, comparable to 'hard' PZT ceramics. Of particular significance is that BNT-based ceramics were found to exhibit minimal variation of resonance frequency shift and high Q_m under high level vibration velocity, being ~0.6% and ~800 at 0.25 m/s, respectively, due to the high domain stability associated with their high coercive fields, being on the order of 35 kV/cm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]