Synthesis and Characterization of Manganese modified Bismuth Alkali Titanate Ceramics

Abstract

Dielectric materials are one of the most extensively studied groups of ceramic materials. The appearance of ferroelectric ordering in some of the dielectrics provides additional degrees of freedom in designing potential devices. As a group of dielectric, ferroelectrics are important electronic materials having a wide range of industrial applications such as high frequency devices, electromechanical transducers, electric capacitors, etc. Multi-functionalities of the ferroelectric materials have triggered the research to understand the intriguing physics of these materials for technological applications. Presently lead based ferroelectric compounds like PbTiO3 (PT), PbZrTiO3 (PZT), PbMg1/3Nb2/3O3-PbTiO3 (PMN-PT) are extensively used in the ferroelectric industries. Due to the toxic nature of lead, the environmentally hazardous lead based compounds are in the phase out process from the industry. The environment friendly, bismuth alkali titanates had attracted the attention of the electronic industry as an alternative to the lead based compounds, because of their high relative permittivity, modest tangent loss and low leakage current and high remnant polarizations. newlineThis work is mainly focused on the synthesis and characterization of manganese (Mn) modified bismuth alkali titanate ceramics. Modifications in the materials has been carried out aiming at stability in the structural, micro-structural properties and enhancement in the electric, dielectric and ferroelectric properties of the materials for their suitable practical applications. In view of this, we have synthesized manganese modified bismuth sodium titanate, bismuth potassium titanate and bismuth lithium titanate material by the high-temperature solid state reaction method. Preliminary structural analysis using X-ray diffraction (XRD) data confirmed the formation of the single-phase compounds. Detailed structural analysis revealed that the manganese modified bismuth sodium titanate crystallizes in rhombohedral crystal structure, whereas bismuth potassium tita