Rayleigh analysis of dielectric properties in textured K0.5Na0.5NbO3 ceramics

Grain texturing is a known method of exploiting the intrinsic dielectric and piezoelectric anisotropy in ferroelectric ceramics. However, the role of crystallographic texture on anisotropic extrinsic contributions including domain wall motion is not yet understood. Here, we investigate the dielectric and piezoelectric properties and small signal dielectric nonlinearities in K0.5Na0.5NbO3 ceramics in different directions of textured specimens and compare to ceramics without crystallographic texture. We demonstrate that directions in which pseudo-cubic < 100 > poles have greatest orientation density exhibit both an enhanced longitudinal piezoelectric response and lower dielectric nonlinearity. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.