Crystal growth and electric properties of lead‐free NBT‐BT at compositions near the morphotropic phase boundary

Abstract Lead‐free piezoelectric materials such as Na 0.5 Bi 0.5 TiO 3 ‐BaTiO 3 (NBBT) solid solution have been paid increasing attention from an environmental perspective. In this paper, a series of NBBT single crystals with compositions near the morphotropic phase boundary (MPB) were grown by the top‐seeded solution growth (TSSG) method. The compositional dependence of crystalline structure was investigated by high‐resolution X‐ray diffraction (XRD). In addition, the dielectric, piezoelectric and ferroelectric (FE) properties of NBBT crystals were also investigated. Excellent piezoelectric properties of NBBT crystals, especially large thickness coupling factors k t , were obtained near the MPB, which are more than or close to the performances of PZT ceramics. Moreover, the performances of NBBT crystals can be further enhanced by doping. Finally, the domain configurations of NBBT96/4 crystal were studied preliminarily. magnified image