DIELECTRIC AND PIEZOELECTRIC PROPERTIES OF (K,Na)NbO3-BASED PIEZOELECTRIC CERAMICS
Solid solutions based on Li , Ta and Sb -doped (K0.5Na0.5)NbO3 (KNN) lead-free perovskite systems were created using standard solid-state methods. X-ray diffraction was used to confirm that all compositions were single phase and to verify the phase transition from tetragonal to cubic at TC = 302° C . The three compositions examined, originally developed by Saito and Li , were shown to be strongly ferroelectric with sharp peaks in permittivity present at the Curie temperature. The optimum composition had loss tangent values below 5% up to 100 kHz at room temperature. Bipolar hysteresis measurements showed high values for both maximum polarization (25 and 21 μC/cm2) and remenant polarizations (20 and 16 μC/cm2) for undoped and 0.2 wt% CuO -doped samples. Maximum strain values of greater than 0.23% were observed.