Electric Fatigue of PZT Piezoelectric Ceramics under Bias and Unipolar Pulse Cycling Field

Abstract

Electric fatigue of piezoelectric ceramics is very important for piezoelectric actuator applications in strong field. In order to classify the fatigue of ferroelectric and piezoelectric properties, the electric fatigue behavior of piezoelectric ceramics of PZT-PMN-PNN was investigated under bias and unipolar pulse cycling field. The bias and unipolar polarization hysteresis loops are measured before and after cycling. The polarization measurements after cycling show a much smaller decrease than bipolar fatigue, but the piezoelectric coefficient d33 still suffers relatively higher deterioration, which indicates different characteristics for piezoelectric and ferroelectric fatigues. A possible mechanism of the partial pining of switching domains responsible for the difference is discussed in this paper.