Effects of Sintering Method on Microstructure and Electrical Properties of Doped Lead Zirconate Titanate Piezoelectric Ceramics

The doped lead zirconate titanate ceramics powders were used to fabricate piezoelectric ceramics by electric heat sintering and microwave sintering, and the effects of two kinds of sintering technologies on microstructure and electrical properties of piezoelectric ceramics were studied. The results show that the microstructure, dielectric properties and piezoelectric properties of piezoelectric ceramics sintered by the two methods changed in the same trend with increase of sintering temperature. The piezoelectric ceramics with smaller grain size and uniform distribution were gained by the way of microwave sintering. The density, dielectric and piezoelectric constants of ceramics sintered by the microwave method at 1 000 ℃ for 40 min reached the maximum values of 7.1 g·cm-3,1 616 and 360, and they were slightly low than the density (7.5 g·cm-3), dielectric constant (1 910), piezoelectric constant (411) of piezoelectric ceramics sintered by the electric heat sintering at 1 250 ℃ for 120 min.