Chiang Mai Journal of Science

Lead zirconate titanate ceramics with formula Pb(Zr_xTi_1-x)O3 or PZT are widely used in actuator and transducer applications. In practice, the ceramics are often used under compressive stress. Therefore, this study is carried out to investigate the uniaxial stress dependence of hysteresis properties by measuring the ferroelectric parameters; i.e. Pr, Ps and Ec as a function of uniaxial compressive pre-stress. It is found that the applied stress shows marked effects on the ferroelectric properties of PZT ceramics by significantly reducing the values of remanent polarization (P_r), spontaneous polarization (P_s) with increasing stress, while the coercive field is reduced only slightly.