Electric fatigue initiated by surface contamination in high polarization ceramics

A study of the fatigue behavior of hot-pressed PLZT (La-doped lead zirconate titanate) with composition 7/68/32 under different surface conditions is reported. It is found that the fatigue occurring at a few thousand of cycles is mainly caused by the contaminated surface instead of by intrinsic structure deterioration. For the same gold electrodes, samples with a conventionally cleaned surface showed significant fatigue within 10/sup 5/ switching cycles while samples with surfaces cleaned by an improved procedure did not show fatigue even after 10/sup 8/ switching cycles. The mechanism of fatigue introduced by surface contamination is explained by interface degradation between ceramic and electrode.<
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