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 (ε _r ), dielectric loss (tan δ), 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 ε _r of the composites was not obvious, while (when) the tan δ 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 ε _r , tan δ, 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 ε _r of composites showed a trend of increasing first and then decreasing, and the tan δ decreased at first, then increased and decreased at last. When grain size of ceramic particle was 150∼180 μm, the piezoelectric composite had the best comprehensive performance (ε _r = 54.48, tan δ = 0.029, d ₃₃ = 17.9 pC/N, g ₃₃ = 37.11 mV · m/N).