Composition-driven phase boundary and its energy harvesting performance of BCZT lead-free piezoelectric ceramic

Piezoelectric energy harvesting is a hot topic in the field of new energy, and the key point is to design high power lead-free piezoelectric ceramic. In this work, a novel lead-free material system of (1-x)Ba(Zr0.1985Cu0.0015Ti0.8)O3-δ-x(Ba0.7Ca0.3)TiO3 [(1-x)BZCT-xBCT] was designed, and the energy harvesting characteristics were tailored through the composition-driven phase boundary evolution. The R-O-T phase boundary boosts the strong piezoelectric activity, obtaining an optimal energy harvesting performance. In the mode of the cantilever-type energy harvester, a high output power of 70 μW and voltage of 8 V were obtained at x = 0.55 specimen with a low resonance frequency of 90 Hz and acceleration of 10 m/s2, which were further increased to 700 μW and 25 V when the acceleration increased to 50 m/s2. The excellent low frequency characteristics show the potential applications of this material in piezoelectric generators harvesting environmental vibration energy.