2024 article
Electrical De-poling and Re-poling of Relaxor-PbTiO3 Piezoelectric Single Crystals without Heat Treatment
Jiang, X., Kim, H.-P., Zhang, M.-H., Wang, B., Wu, H., Moon, S., … Chen, L.-Q. (2024, February 8).
open access via doi.org (publisher)<title>Abstract</title> Re-poling of unexpected partially depoled piezoelectric materials conventionally need to be first fully depoled through annealing above their Curie temperature (<italic>T</italic><sub>c</sub>) to revive piezoelectric performances. Here, we investigated de-poling and re-poling of Pb(In<sub>1/2</sub>Nb<sub>1/2</sub>)O<sub>3</sub>-Pb(Mg<sub>1/3</sub>Nb<sub>2/3</sub>)O<sub>3</sub>-PbTiO<sub>3</sub> (PIN-PMN-PT) single crystals under electric fields at room temperature. We found that alternating current (AC) electric fields with amplitudes near the coercive field (<italic>E</italic><sub>c</sub>) at low frequencies (< 10 Hz) can be employed to successfully depolarize poled crystals at room temperature. We also demonstrated a reversible polarization switching process with a relaxor-PT single crystal ultrasound transducer without device performance degradation. This experimental observation is supported by phase-field simulation, showing that AC electric fields can readily induce de-poling at room temperature, while DC electric fields induce a transient depoled state only within an uncontrollable short period of time. The findings suggested new strategies for unprecedented in-device tailoring of the polarization states of ferroelectric materials.