Transparent Lead Lanthanum Zirconate Titanate Ceramics Derived from Oxide Mixture Via a Repeated Annealing Process

Abstract

Lead lanthanum zirconate titanate (PLZT9/65/35) ceramics were prepared from their oxide mixture via reactive sintering without involving a calcination step. PLZT ceramics sintered at 1000 °C for 4 h possessed a grain size of 3–4 μm, a dielectric constant of 3670, a dielectric loss of 0.033 at 1 kHz, and a remnant polarization of 5.7 μC/cm2 and coercive field of 4.6 kV/cm, respectively. Transparent PLZT ceramics were obtained by annealing the sintered samples at 1125 °C for 6 h repeatedly for 4 times without using hot pressing or oxygen flow. The grain size of PLZT ceramics increased to 4–6 μm, with dielectric constant of 5187 and dielectric loss (1 kHz) of 0.036, and remnant polarization of 11 μC/cm2 and coercive field of 5.3 kV/cm. The transparent PLZT ceramics demonstrated a transmittance of 42% at a wavelength of 550 nm.