Electrical Fatigue‐Induced Cracking in Lead Zirconate Titanate Piezoelectric Ceramic and Its Influence Quantitatively Analyzed by Refatigue Method

Lead zirconate titanate ( PZT ) is one of the most commonly used piezoelectric ceramics. The major causes of its electrical fatigue are suggested to be domain pinning and cracking. However, their contributions to fatigue have never been quantitatively compared. This study focuses on the electrical fatigue‐induced microstructure damage in the near‐electrode regions of PZT and uses a refatigue method to determine quantitatively the contribution of the cracking mechanism to electrical fatigue. It is shown that during bipolar electrical cycling, a large number of cracks are initiated in the samples, and the cracking is particularly concentrated in the near‐electrode regions. So the loss of piezoelectric properties can be partially restored by removing such regions. For a particular fatigue stage, the cracking mechanism contributes significantly more to the electrical fatigue than the domain pinning mechanism.