Lead zirconate titanate ceramics derived from oxide mixture treated by a high-energy ball milling process

Lead zirconate titanate (Pb(Zr0.52Ti0.48)O-3 or PZT) ceramics were directly prepared from their oxide mixture, which was treated by a high-energy ball milling process. X-ray diffraction (XRD) result indicated that there was n o reaction between the component oxides during the milling process. The par ticle size of the mixture was greatly reduced to nanometer scale by the mil ling process. Sintering behavior of the mixture demonstrated a distinguishe d volumetric expansion before densification, clearly showing that a reactio n sintering occurred at about 770 degreesC. PZT ceramics sintered at 1000 d egreesC for 4 h exhibited a dielectric constant of 1156 and dielectric loss of 0.03, a remnant polarization of 29 muC/cm(2) and a coercive field of 18 .4 kV/cm. Piezoelectric parameters of the 1000 degreesC-sintered PZT cerami cs were k(33) of 40.4%, k(31) of 40.9%, d(33) of 175 pC/N and d(31) of -148 pC/N, respectively. These results have shown that preparation of PZT ceram ics in this way is practical. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights res erved.