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Published April 2004 | public
Journal Article

Large electrostrictive actuation of barium titanate single crystals

Abstract

An experimental investigation of the electromechanical behavior of single crystals of the ferroelectric perovskite barium titanate is presented. An experimental setup has been designed to investigate large strain actuation in single crystal ferroelectrics subjected to combined electrical and mechanical loading. Experiments have been performed on initially single domain crystals of barium titanate with (1 0 0) and (0 0 1) orientation at compressive stresses between 0 and 5 MPa. Global strain and polarization histories have been recorded. The electrostrictive response is shown to be highly dependent on the level of applied stress with a maximum strain of 0.9% measured at a compressive stress of about 2 MPa and electric 8eld of about 10 kV/cm. This level of strain is about 5 times higher than in typical commercial piezoelectric PZT. Polarized light microscopy has been used to observe the evolution of the domain pattern simultaneously with the strain and polarization measurement. The observations reveal that the observed large strain behavior is the result of 90° domain switching.

Additional Information

© 2003 Elsevier Ltd. Received 30 August 2002; accepted 18 August 2003. Support from the Army Research Office through a grant from the Solid Mechanics Program (DAAD19-99-1-0319) and MURI (DAAD 19-01-1-0517) as well as that of the MRSEC program of the National Science Foundation (DMR-0080065) is gratefully acknowledged.

Additional details

Created:
August 22, 2023
Modified:
October 24, 2023