The discovery of (BaxCa1-x)(ZryTi1-x)O3 lead-free ceramics drawn a lot of attention to those novel materials because of their excellent piezoelectric properties. However, quite a little attention has been paid to other features of the material. This article reports a wide range of research, including composition, structure and microstructure, dielectric response and impedance spectroscopy in order to systematize and expand knowledge about this peculiar ceramics and strontium doping effect on its properties. In order to test that influence a series of samples with various strontium concentration, precisely the admixtures of 0.02, 0.04 and 0.06 mol% were prepared, as well as basic ceramics to compare obtained results.

An optimized method of vibration Energy Harvesting is based on a step-down transformer that regulates the power flow from the piezoelectric element to the desired electronic load. Taking into account parameters of the whole system, the “optimal” voltage gain the piezoelectric transformer can be determined where the harvested power is maximized for the actual level of mechanical excitation. Consequently the piezoelectric transformers can be used to boost up the conversion of mechanical strain into electrical power with considerable potential in Energy Harvesting applications. Nowadays however, the most important factor is usage of lead free material for its construction. Additional desired parameters of such ceramics include high value of piezoelectric coefficients, low dielectric losses and reasonable power density. This work for first time proposes a lead free K0.5Na0.5NbO3 (KNN) material implementation for stack type of piezoelectric transformer that is designed for load efficiency optimization of vibration energy harvester.

La0,7Ca0,3MnO3 polycrystalline were synthesized from La2O3, CaO and MnO2 powder mixture using a solid state reaction technique. The compound powders were obtained through the free sintering method at different temperatures and sintering times in order to study the influence of technological conditions on Ca doped La manganites. The most important physical features as structure, microstructure and morphology were described after X-ray diffraction investigation. Photographs of the specimen fractures were taken with SEM (scanning electron microscope) and they revealed high porosity of the tested material and great tendency for its grains to create agglomerates. Influence of doping and technological conditions on lattice parameters were studied by means of Rietvield analysis. The XRD measurements reveal that La0,7Ca0,3MnO3 has orthorhombic symmetry with Pnma space group.