Tracing Chemical Heterogeneity Across Scales in Alkali Niobate Based Lead-Free Piezoelectric Ceramics and its Influence on Functional Properties
Student Contest:
No
Affiliation Type:
Academia
Keywords:
lead-free, piezoelectric, microstructure, electron microscopy
Abstract:
Lead-free piezoelectric ceramics have become a topic of intensive research in early 2000 in response to increased awareness of public and governing bodies that harmful substances should be replaced with more benign ones. Candidate materials include modified compounds or solid solutions in accord with the concept of phase boundary engineering, but reaching chemical homogeneity and consequently a reproducible response in such systems is often quite challenging. We relate the choice of the synthetic route or even minute changes in processing, with the phase composition, microstructure down to nanoscale and consequently with the functional response of the studied materials.
