Strong lead-free bioinspired piezoceramics for durable energy transducers

Abstract

Durable, high-performance and eco-friendly lead-free piezoceramics are essential for next-generation sustainable energy transducers and electromechanical systems. While significant performance enhancements have been made, through chemical composition, texture, or crystal defects, piezoceramics are intrinsically weak mechanically, which negatively impact their working conditions and durability. What's more, improving comprehensive mechanical durability without sacrificing piezoelectric performance remains a key challenge. Here, we design bioinspired Bi0.5Na0.5TiO3 (BNT) ceramics using a scalable colloidal process that enables multiscale control over the microstructure. The design comprises plate-like monocrystalline BNT bricks stacked to induce a crystallographic texture along the poling direction, bonded together by a silica-based mortar, forming the brick-and-mortar phase. This deliberate microstructure design yields 2- to 3-fold increase in flexural strength, and 1.6- to 2-fold increase in fracture toughness compared with a BNT synthesized conventionally, comparable to common structural ceramics, without sacrificing the piezoelectric performance. In addition, the bioinspired BNT exhibit dramatically enhanced ferroelectric fatigue resistance, with a 10- to 15-folds improvement in the number of field-induced electromechanical cycles before failure. These gains originate from anisotropic residual stress fields, revealed by Raman spectroscopy and XRD, which delay crack initiation events. Furthermore, we demonstrated enhanced transducing capability and electromechanical fatigue resistance using a cantilever beam-based piezoelectric transducer under bending mode. Given its non-chemical-compositional origin, this bioinspired strategy could be broadly applicable to other piezoelectric material systems for applications where both functional and structural performance are critical.