Influence of PZT piezoelectric ceramics on the structure and electric properties of piezoelectric lead zirconate titanate/poly(vinylidene fluoride) composites

In the paper, piezoelectric lead zirconate titanate/poly(vinylidene fluoride) composites were prepared by hot pressing method, and influences of changing types, volume fraction and particle size of piezoelectric lead zirconate titanate (PZT) on the dielectric constant (epsilon(r)), dielectric loss (tan delta), the piezoelectric strain constant (d(33)) and piezoelectric voltage constant (g(33)) of this composites were also studied. The results showed that the influence of PZT types on the epsilon(r) of the composites was not obvious, while (when) the tan delta varied a lot, and when the volume fraction of PZT was larger than 50%, there were larger differences between the composites of the g(33) and d(33). The epsilon(r), tan delta, d(33) and g(33) of piezoelectric composites increased along with the increase of the volume fraction of the ceramic phase. With the particle size of PZT increased, the epsilon(r) of composites showed a trend of increasing first and then decreasing, and the tan delta decreased at first, then increased and decreased at last. When grain size of ceramic particle was 150 similar to 180 mu m, the piezoelectric composite had the best comprehensive performance (epsilon(r) = 54.48, tan delta = 0.029, d(33) = 17.9 pC/N, g(33) = 37.11 mV.m/N).