Investigations of electrostrictive Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O-3-PbTiO3 ceramics underhigh-power drive conditions: Importance of compositional fluctuations on residual hysteresis

The high-field polarization behavior of electrostrictive Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O-3- PbTiO3 ceramics has been investigated as a function of measurement frequenc y, drive field, and temperature. It was observed that hysteretic losses inc rease with increasing frequency. Significant variations in loss were found between specimens of similar composition obtained from different sources, w hich became more pronounced with increasing temperature. The results indica te that careful synthesis and processing are crucial to the thermal stabili ty of electrostrictive ceramics in high-power source applications. Further investigations revealed the potential use of accelerated aging by substitue nt introduction for mitigation of thermal stability concerns. (C) 2001 Amer ican Institute of Physics.