Textured PZT ceramics Stéphanie Devemy a, ⁎, Christian Courtois a , Philippe Champagne a , Marc Lippert a , Gérard Moreau a , Fabrice Petit b , Anne Leriche a a Laboratoire des matériaux et Procédés, ZI du Champ de l'Abbesse, 59600 Maubeuge, France b Belgian Ceramic Research Center, 4, avenue Gouverneur Cornez, 7000 Mons, Belgium ABSTRACT ARTICLE INFO Available online 9 May 2008 Keywords: Textured Flux Sintering Densification PZT The purpose of this study is to make a textured PZT ceramic starting from tape cast sheet in order to improve their piezoelectric properties. PZT powders with cubic morphology are synthesized by flux growth. XRD and X-EDS analysis show that the obtained grains have a size which can reach 70 μm and present an tetragonal structure, with the Pb(Zr 0,44 Ti 0,56 )O 3 composition. The slurry made from these particles is tape cast on a « Doctor Blade » bench. The last stage consists in densifying the samples. Reorganization of large-size grains during sintering being difficult, the densification turns out to be delicate to operate by natural sintering. More sophisticated methods as hot pressing are used to improve the densification. Both techniques, natural sintering and hot pressing, are compared. The realized samples are characterized by SEM, X-ray diffraction, specific surface area and density measurements, and piezoelectric coefficient d 33 measurements. © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Lead Zirconate Titanate (PZT) is a material usually used for its very good piezoelectric properties and its large range of working tem- peratures. This material is industrially widely developed and appears in very different applications which use the direct effect, inverse effect, or both. It was recently proved, on several types of ferroelectric and piezoelectric materials such as PMN-PT [1], BT-PZT [2], SrFe 12 O 19 [3] and Ba TiO 3 [4], that their properties could be optimized thanks to a preferential crystalline orientation. One technique applied to texture these materials is the method of Templated Grain Growth (TGG). It consists in realizing large anisotropic grains, then to mix them with a population of fine and reagent grains. The thermal cycle is optimized so as to facilitate the development of the matrix with a topotaxic way texture. During the heat treatment, the material develops an oriented microstructure and structure. The concentration in seeds, their shape and sizes, and the sintering conditions are the most important parameters which control the texturation behavior. This process can be done starting from a mixture of homogeneous powder (matrix and seeds of same composition), or starting from an heterogeneous mixture (seeds and additional grains different in terms of shapes and compositions). In this work, we developed a method to procure a texturation by lamination of large cubic grains of PZT following by their sintering. The lamination is done thanks to a tape casting. These tapes are then densified. During sintering, the orientation of the grains in the tapes should be preserved, and it is hoped that grain growth phenomenon enhances the texturation state. As only large and cubic PZT grains are used, this technique would allow to avoid the use of heterogeneous seeds (Ba 6 Ti 7 0 40 3 ) which establish a structure implying lower characteristics than those of the PZT from a piezoelectric point of view. In our case, it is hoped that the coarsest grains play a role as seeds and the finest as the matrix. 2. Experimental procedure 2.1. PZT powders synthesis All the powders used for the texturation of PZT ceramic are synthesized by the method of flux grain growth in PbO. This technique consists in warming, in a temperature range permitting the PbO melting, a mixture of the PbO (Massicot, MERCK), ZrO 2 (Baddeleyite, HUELS AG, N 95%) and TiO 2 (Anathase, LABOSI, N 99%) with a large excess of PbO in a platinum crucible. The mixture is then slowly cooled until room temperature to make the nuclei Powder Technology 190 (2009) 141–145 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: stephanie.devemy@univ-valenciennes.fr (S. Devemy). 0032-5910/$ – see front matter © 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.powtec.2008.04.096 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Powder Technology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/powtec