This study investigated the structural, dielectric, ferroelectric, and strain properties of (0.98-x)Bi1/2Na1/2TiO3- 0.02BiFeO3-xSrTiO3 (BNT-BF-100xST, x＝0.20, 0.22, 0.24, 0.26, and 0.28). All samples were successfully synthesized using the conventional solid-state reaction method and sintered at 1,175℃ for 2 h. The average grain size of the BNT-BF-100x ceramics decreased with increasing ST content. Furthermore, we observed that the ferroelectric- relaxor transition temperature (TF-R) decreased with increasing ST content, which eventually vanished in the BNT-BF-24ST ceramics. The results indicated that a ferroelectric to relaxor phase transition could be induced by ST modification. Consequently, a large electromechanical strain of 633 pm/V at 4 kV/mm was observed for the BNT-BF-26ST ceramics. These results imply that our materials have the competitive advantage of larger strain under lower operating field conditions compared with other BNT-based lead-free piezoelectric ceramics. We expect that BNT-BF-ST lead-free piezoelectric ceramics are promising candidates as a novel ternary BNT-based system and can find potential applications in actuators.
