Intrinsic elastic, dielectric, and piezoelectric losses in lead zirconate titanate ceramics determined by an immittance-fitting method

The material coefficients of "soft" and "hard" lead zirconate titanate (PZT) ceramics were determined as complex values by the nonlinear least-squares-fitting of immittance data measured for length-extensional bar resonators. The piezoelectric d-constant should be a complex value to obtain a best fitting between observed and calculated results. Because the elastic, dielectric, and piezoelectric losses determined in this process were not "intrinsic" losses, a calculation process to evaluate the "intrinsic" losses was proposed. It was confirmed that the intrinsic losses were smaller than the corresponding extrinsic losses. The intrinsic piezoelectric loss existed in both soft and hard PZTs; similar to50% of the loss of piezoelectric d-constant was derived from the elastic and dielectric losses. The most notable difference between the soft and hard PZTs was observed in their elastic losses.