Comparative studies of dynamic hysteresis responses in hard and soft PZT ceramics

Lead zirconate titanate (PZT) is a ferroelectric material with very interesting and useful dynamic hysteresis properties. Normally, PZT is doped with donors or acceptors to yield better electrical properties. Soft and hard PZT ceramics are respectively donor- and acceptor-doped PZT, which are commercially available and widely employed in various applications. Previous investigations have mainly been focused on the dynamic hysteresis at room temperature and under stress-free condition. However, when used, these ceramics are normally subjected to stress. More importantly, the ambient temperature is usually not at room temperature. Therefore, this study was to investigate dynamic hysteresis behavior of both hard and soft PZT ceramics with varying compressive stress and temperature. The results clearly revealed the influence of external stress and temperature on the dynamic hysteresis of both types of PZT ceramics. Increasing stress and temperature resulted in a decrease of the hysteresis area of the two types of PZT ceramics.     

Local Structure of Magnetoelectric BiFeO3–BaTiO3 Ceramics Probed by Synchrotron X-Ray Absorption Spectroscopy

The novel Cu- and Mn-doped and Cu/Mn codoped 0.75BiFeO₃–0.25BaTiO₃ magnetoelectric ceramics were successfully prepared by a solid-state reaction method. The dielectric, ferroelectric, ferromagnetic, and magnetoelectric properties were determined and all the results suggested that Cu and Mn dopants occupied different B-site lattices in the 0.75BiFeO₃–0.25BaTiO₃ structure. To identify the preferential sites of Cu and Mn in the lattice, Synchrotron X-ray Absorption Spectroscopy (SXAS) measurements were carried out. A combination of both measured and simulated XAS results with a linear combination fitting (LCF) revealed that in Cu- and Mn-doped 0.75BiFeO₃–0.25BaTiO₃ ceramics both Mn and Cu substituted at Fe-site and Ti-site with slightly different proportion. On the other hand, both dopants were found to occupied different sites in Cu/Mn codoped 0.75BiFeO₃–0.25BaTiO₃ ceramics.     

Effect of Li addition on phase formation behavior and electrical properties of (K0.5Na0.5)NbO3 lead free ceramics

In this work, Li-modified KNN ceramic compositions ((K_0.5Na_0.5)_1−xLi_x)NbO₃ with x = 0.03, 0.04, 0.05, 0.06, 0.65 and 0.07 were prepared by a conventional solid-state mixed-oxide method. The structural phase formation and microstructure were characterized by X-ray diffraction technique (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM). It has been found that a morphotropic phase boundary (MPB) between orthorhombic phase and tetragonal phases should exist between compositions with Li contents of 6-6.5%. The Curie temperature (T_c) of the ceramics shifted to higher temperature with increasing Li content. The room temperature dielectric constant was also seen to be higher than the pure KNN ceramics. In addition, the ferroelectric properties were found to enhance at near MPB compositions. This study clearly showed that the addition of Li could improve the dielectric and ferroelectric properties in (K_0.5Na_0.5)NbO₃ ceramics.     

Relaxor Characteristics of the Phase Transformation in (1 − x)BaTiO3–xBi(Zn1/2Ti1/2)O3 Perovskite Ceramics

The single‐phase solid solutions of the (1 ? x)BaTiO₃–(x)Bi(Zn_1/2Ti_1/2)O₃ (BT–BZT) where x = 0.02–0.15 were prepared to investigate dielectric properties. Crystal structure of samples was obtained by using an X‐ray diffraction technique and Raman spectroscopy. For compositions with x ≤ 0.08, the solid solutions exhibited clear tetragonal symmetry and transitioned to pseudocubic symmetry as the content of BZT increased. The dielectric response exhibited a sharp phase transition within the BT‐rich region and the composition 0.92BT–0.08BZT was characterized by the onset of relaxor characteristics. As the concentration of BZT increased, the phase transition exhibited broader and more diffuse behavior. The polarization as a function of electric field (P–E) of these solid solutions also exhibited the same trend. The BT‐rich compositions showed a normal ferroelectric P–E response with a decrease in loop area as the BZT content increased. The composition at x = 0.08 exhibited a pinched hysteresis loop and with further increase in BZT content, the P–E response was characterized by slim loops.     

Electrostrictive Strain in Low-Permittivity Dielectrics

A single-beam interferometer capable of resolving displacements on the order of 10^–4 Å was used to examine the field-induced displacement in several low-permittivity dielectric materials. The experimental principle and procedures of the single-beam interferometer are described in this article. The importance and the accuracy of the Maxwell stress and the thermal stress corrections are also discussed. We present in this article the field-induced strains and the apparent electrostrictive coefficients of several common dielectric materials, including Al₂O₃, BeO, MgO, AlN ceramics, and SiO₂ glass. Under application of an electric field, these common ceramic materials become thicker in the field direction, while glasses and glass-ceramics get thinner. The magnitude of the displacements varies between 10^–2 to 10^–3 Å under 1 MV/m electric field. By comparison, the field-induced displacements in these common electronic materials are approximately 3 to 5 orders of magnitude smaller than those observed in relaxor materials, such as PMN and PVDF, and soft polymers.     

Estimation of energy density of PMN-PT ceramics utilizing mechanical stress

Abstract

Present study introduces an indirect measurement of energy density of (1-x)Pb(Mg_1/3Nb_2/3)O₃-(x)PbTiO₃ (PMN-PT) ceramics under compressive stress and electric field. The method works analogous to Olsen cycle which is a demonstration of a novel cycle converting mechanical energy into electrical energy. A large amount of electro-mechanical energy conversion can be achieved via this method. The ceramics were investigated under 0–75?MPa and 1–15?kV/cm of applied mechanical stress and electric field, respectively. A maximum energy density of 68?kJ/m³/cycle was achieved in 0.7PMN-0.3PT ceramic. The obtained result is significantly greater than that of linear piezoelectric phenomena.     

Thermal expansion measurements in the relaxor ferroelectric PIN-PT system

Thermal expansion was measured for the ceramic compositions (1 − x)Pb(In_0.5Nb_0.5)O₃-(x)PbTiO₃ (x = 0.0, 0.1, 0.2 and 0.3) prepared via the wolframite method. The deviation from the straight line below Burns temperature for all the compositions was due to the dynamic polarization fluctuations. Burns temperature was determined and found to increase with increasing PT concentration. The local polarization was calculated from the thermal expansion data. The calculated local polarization and the measured reversible spontaneous polarization were compared and the relaxor behavior of the PIN-PT compositions was analyzed.     

Cybersecurity policy verification with declarative programming

Cybersecurity is a growing concern in today’s society. Security policies have been developed to ensure that data and assets remain protected for legitimate users, but there must be a mechanism to verify that these policies can be enforced. This paper addresses the verification problem of security policies in role-based access control of enterprise software. Most existing approaches employ traditional logic or procedural programming that tends to involve complex expressions or search with backtrack. These can be time-consuming, and hard to understand, and update, especially for large-scale security verification problems. Declarative programming paradigms such as “Answer Set” programming have been widely used to alleviate these issues by ways of elegant and flexible modeling for complex search problems. However, solving problems using these paradigms can be challenging due to the nature and limitation of the declarative problem solver. This paper presents an approach to automated security policy verification using Answer Set programming. In particular, we investigate how the separation of duty security policy in role-based access control can be verified. Our contribution is a modeling approach that maps this verification problem into a graph-coloring problem to facilitate the use of generate-and-test in a declarative problem-solving paradigm. The paper describes a representation model and rules that drive the Answer Set Solver and illustrates the proposed approach to securing web application software to assist the hiring process in a company.