Ferroelectric properties of microwave processed PZT-NiZn ferrite composites

Abstract

Being materials with a large number of interesting properties, ferroelectric-ferrite based composites have recently been developed. People are showing a great interest in these materials due to some unique properties like magnetoelectric effect in addition to the ferroelectric, dielectric and magnetic properties. After a review of literature it is found that the variation in different properties of PZT ceramics is found to depend on the amount of ferrite content. In this paper, we are reporting the variation in ferroelectric properties of PbZr<inf>0.65</inf>Ti<inf>0.35</inf>O<inf>3</inf> (PZT) by varying Ni-Zn ferrite (NZF) content. The studied system having compositional formula (1-x) PZT-x NZF (0 ≤ x ≤ 0.025, in steps of 0.005), was prepared by solid state route using microwave sintering. Remanant polarization was found to be monotonically decreasing with increasing ferrite content as observed from the recorded P-E hysteresis loops for all the samples at 20 Hz. Microwave sintering results in significant improvements in properties as compared to conventionally sintered samples. Copyright © 2010 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC. © 2011 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.