Solid state grain growth of piezoelectric single crystals

The recent results related to development of the solid state crystal growth process, specially focusing on PMN-PT are presented. The processing parameters such as sintering atmosphere and growth temperature of crystal are discussed. The feasibility of using SSCG for the growth of high T/sub c/ piezoelectric materials such as BiScO/sub 3/-PbTiO/sub 3/ will be also presented. The heteroepitaxial nucleation and growth, are examined in 36BiScO/sub 3/-64PbTiO/sub 3/ ceramics using SrTiO/sub 3/ and BaTiO/sub 3/ as template materials. The amount of excess PbO is correlated with the growth distance when BaTiO/sub 3/ single crystals are used as templates. More than 100 /spl mu/m of growth was observed at 1150/spl deg/C after 16 hr heat treatment for this system. When tabular SrTiO/sub 3/ particles are used as template materials, elongated grains /spl sim/10 times larger than matrix grains were observed.