Ultrahigh field-induced strain in lead-free ceramics

Due to the worldwide concerns of environmental protection and sustainable development, lead-free piezoelectric materials are greatly desired for bridging the electrical energy to the mechanical energy. However, their lower energy conversion coefficient compared to the conventional lead-containing piezoelectric materials significantly limits their device applications. Herein, we introduce a novel strategy to increase the strain of lead-free ferroelectric system via material structure design to create polar nano regions (PNRs) and point defects in the material while retaining the global ferroelectric phase. This added short-range structural heterogeneity in the material will facilitate the field-induced phase transition and reversible domain wall switching to enhance the strain. Following this strategy, we demonstrate an ultrahigh strain induced by an electric field in non-textured lead-free Bi0.5Na0.5TiO3 (BNT)-based ceramics. The strain in unipolar mode (Suni) can reach up to 0.74% at 70 kV/cm, making it the highest value in reported lead-free ceramics so far. This puts forward a good route to design high-performance piezoelectric materials by material structure engineering. It also reveals the promising potential of lead-free piezoelectric materials in practical electromechanical device applications. © 2020 The Authors