Significantly enhanced high-temperature power generation of BiScO3–PbTiO3 ceramics by rationally regulating atmosphere sintering

Abstract

Energy harvesting technology centered on piezoceramics is an important way to realize self-powered high-temperature wireless sensors. However, there are still huge challenges in simultaneously obtaining high piezoelectricity, high Curie temperature (T_c) and excellent high-temperature insulation. Herein, taking BiScO₃–PbTiO₃ (BS–PT) as an example, a systematic comparative study on atmosphere-controlled sintering is conducted to address these issues. Compared with normal air sintering and PbZrO₃ atmosphere-protected sintering, applying atmosphere protection with source powder that has exactly the same composition as the BS–PT can effectively inhibit the volatilization of constituent elements. This strategy simultaneously minimizes oxygen vacancies and reduces porosity, ensuring superior high-temperature insulation. Crucially, the maintenance of stoichiometry plays a vital role in preserving a low energy barrier and facilitating highly active domain wall motion, yielding an ultrahigh piezoelectric coefficient (d₃₃) of 532 pC N⁻¹ while maintaining a high T_c of 444 °C, surpassing most of the reported BS–PT binary systems. The high-temperature piezoelectric energy harvester (HT-PEH) assembled with optimized materials has a power density of up to 510 µW cm⁻³ at 350 °C and exhibits excellent fatigue resistance (3 × 10⁵ cycles). Notably, it can effectively drive a commercial wireless sensing module to realize signal transmission and remote reception, and has important application prospects in the field of high-temperature intelligent monitoring. This work presents an effective defect-control approach for developing high-performance piezoceramics for self-powered sensing systems in harsh thermal environments.