Applications of PZT Dielectric Ceramics in High-Energy Storage Systems

Abstract

The barium and strontium titanate (BST) ceramics have been used with great success as excellent dielectrics in the construction of high voltage (HV) commercial ceramic capacitors with reduced dimensions because of their high dielectric constant. However, the main point of this paper is to investigate other type of ceramic known as PZT (Lead Zirconate Titanate) normally used as piezoelectric sensors in industrial applications. The idea herein is to use the PZT ceramics as HV dielectrics for applications in high-energy storage systems by de-poling their piezoelectric properties in order to avoid dielectric damage and losses at high frequencies. For this, de-poled PZT-4 ceramic samples (30 mm × 2 mm) were submitted to HV tests, in which their dielectric breakdown strength and dielectric constant variation with the applied voltage were assessed. These results obtained confirmed the use of PZT in applications that require reasonable dielectric constant stability (< 15 %) with voltage and HV dielectric breakdown (40 kV/cm) for compact high-energy storage devices.