The influence of temperature induced phase transition on the energy storage density of anti-ferroelectric ceramics

Anti-ferroelectric (AFE) composite ceramics of (Pb0.858Ba0.1La0.02Y0.008)(Zr0.65Sn0.3Ti0.05)O-3(Pb0.97La0.02)(Zr0.9Sn0.05Ti0.05)O-3 (PBLYZST-PLZST) were fabricated by the conventional solid-state sintering process (CS), the glass-aided sintering (GAS), and the spark plasma sintering (SPS), respectively. The influence of the temperature induced phase transition on the phase structure, hysteresis loops, and energy storage properties of the composite ceramics were investigated in detail. The measured results of X-ray diffraction demonstrate that the composite ceramics exhibit the perovskite phases and small amounts of non-functional pyrochlore phases. Compared with the CS process, the GAS and SPS processes are proven more helpful to suppress the diffusion behaviors between the PBLYZST and PLZST phases according to the field emission scanning electron microscopy, thereby being able to improve the contribution of PBLYZST phase to the temperature stability of the orthogonal AFE phase. When the ambient temperature rises from 25 degrees C to 125 degrees C, CS and GAS samples have undergone a phase transition from orthorhombic AFE phase to tetragonal AFE phase, which results in a sharp decline in the energy storage density. However, the phase transition temperature of SPS samples is higher than 125 degrees C, and the energy storage density only slightly decreases due to the disorder of material microstructure caused by the high temperature. As a result, the SPS composite ceramics obtain a recoverable high energy storage density of 6.46 J/cm(3) and the excellent temperature stability of the energy storage density of 1.16 x 10(-2) J/degrees C.cm(3), which is 1.29 x 10(-2) J/degrees C.cm(3) lower than that of CS samples and about 0.43 times as that of GAS samples. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.