Abstract: Piezoelectric materials are widely used in vibration sensors, pressure sensors and ultrasonic piezoelectric transducers etc. It is of great significance to explore novel piezoelectric crystal materials for using in special piezoelectric sensor devices. Herein, a novel non-centrosymmetric barium ytterbium phosphate (YbBa₃(PO₄)₃,YbBP) piezoelectric crystal with high melting point (~1 800 ℃) was grown by traditional Czochralski method.The single crystal X-ray diffraction shows that this crystal belongs to the cubic symmetry with the space group of I43d and lattice parameters of a=b=c=1.043 5 nm. It is found that the YbBP single crystal is easier to grow along the direction perpendicular to the (013) facet. High resolution X-ray diffraction was carried out to evaluate the crystalline quality. The full width at half-maximum of rocking curves is 60.6″, indicating that the grown YbBP single crystal shows good quality. Moreover, the dielectric permittivity and piezoele ctric constant were evaluated by using the LCR bridge method, impedance and ultrasonic methods. The relative dielectric permittivity (ε₁₁) and piezoelectric strain constant (d₁₄) of YbBP crystal are 15.3 and 11.4 pC/N, respectively. The YbBP crystal not only possesses large piezoelectric performance but also has pure face-shear vibration mode, indicating the potentials of this crystal for piezoelectric sensing application.

Key words: YbBa₃(PO₄)₃, rare earth phosphate, Czochralski method, piezoelectric property