Synthesis and properties of porous pzt-pcn piezoelectric ceramics

Although studies have shown interesting piezoelectric and dielectric properties of PZT containing composite piezoelectric ceramics, there has been no systematic investigation on the PZT-PCN, especially on the porous one. In this study, the dense ceramics of 0.8Pb (Zr1/2Ti1/2)O3-0.2Pb(Co1/3Nb2/3)O3 abbreviated to (PZTCN) systems were successfully prepared by the columbite-wolframite precursor method via the mixed oxide technique. Porous PZT-PCN ceramics were prepared by burnable plastic sphere process (BURPS) technique with three types of pore forming agents (PFAs), poly vinyl chloride (PVC), stearic acid (SA), and poly methyl methacrylate (PMMA) at different weight percentages(5, 10, and 15 %). The main objective of this study is to investigate the effects of processing parameters, PFA additions, and sintering temperature on the formation of phases, micro structural evolution, piezoelectric, and dielectric properties of the system. The challenges are PbO atmosphere control, pyrochlore phase formation, and determination of sintering procedure. Within the dense PCN ceramic preparation process, undesired pyrochlore phase was detected in XRD test for low milling time (6 h) between Pb