Fatigue anisotropy in lead-zirconate-titanate

Bipolar fatigue in bulk lead-zirconate-titanate ceramics is known to induce a severe loss of switchable polarization and strong asymmetries of strain hysteresis in cycling direction. An investigation into the transverse functional dependencies is conducted here. The polarization hysteresis perpendicular to the cycling direction only loses 35% amplitude after 2·107 cycles (compared to 80% in cycling direction). The strain in this field direction is symmetric and only reduced in amplitude (−8%). The transverse strain in the original cycling direction does exhibit pronounced asymmetries. Constant volume due to domain switching is no longer valid.