Boosting the High Performance of BiFeO-BaTiO Lead-Free Piezoelectric Ceramics: One-Step Preparation and Reaction Mechanisms.

One of the notorious problems in BiFeO-based piezoelectric ceramics is how to limit the formation of BiFeO and BiFeO impurities to achieve excellent piezoelectric performance. In this study, a one-step preparation technology, namely, excluding PVA, calcining, and sintering are completed in one step, instead of three steps in the ordinary sintering method, is developed to prepare BiFeO-BaTiO (BF-BT) ceramics. The significance of this one-step method is that the thermodynamically unstable region of BiFeO is successfully avoided based on the Gibbs free energy of BiFeO, BiFeO, and BiFeO.