Photostriction properties of PLZT (4/52/48) ceramics sintered by SPS

In this paper, the preparation and sintering process of Lanthanum-modified lead zirconate titanate ceramics (PLZT 4/52/48) powders and ceramics were investigated. The PLZT powders were prepared by co-precipitation and sol-gel methods. It is confirmed that PLZT powders synthesized by sol-gel method had smaller grains and better dispersion. The atmosphere sintering and spark plasma sintering (SPS) technique were used to sinter the PLZT ceramics separately. After sintering, the physical, electrical, and optical properties of the PLZT ceramics sintered by different methods were tested. The results show that the SPS sintering can increase the densification degree (reaching 99.5%) of the PLZT ceramics, which improved the transparency, ferroelectric, piezoelectric and optical properties of PLZT ceramics. It is found that when the light intensity reached 600 mW/cm(2), the maximum photo-induced strain of the SPS sintered ceramic was as high as 10. 84 x 10(-3), which was almost 1.4 times larger than that of the atmosphere-sintered sample. Obviously, the sol-gel method and SPS process can enhance the comprehensive performance of PLZT ceramics.