Barium titanate

Barium titanate (BTO) is an inorganic compound with chemical formula BaTiO3. Barium titanate appears white as a powder and is transparent when prepared as large crystals. It is a ferroelectric, pyroelectric, and piezoelectric ceramic material that exhibits the photorefractive effect. It is used in capacitors, electromechanical transducers and nonlinear optics. Perovskite (structure) The solid exists in one of four polymorphs depending on temperature. From high to low temperature, these crystal symmetries of the four polymorphs are cubic, tetragonal, orthorhombic and rhombohedral crystal structure. All of these phases exhibit the ferroelectric effect apart from the cubic phase. The high temperature cubic phase is easiest to describe, as it consists of regular corner-sharing octahedral TiO6 units that define a cube with O vertices and Ti-O-Ti edges. In the cubic phase, Ba2+ is located at the center of the cube, with a nominal coordination number of 12. Lower symmetry phases are stabilized at lower temperatures and involve movement of the Ti4+ to off-center positions. The remarkable properties of this material arise from the cooperative behavior of the Ti4+ distortions. Above the melting point, the liquid has a remarkably different local structure to the solid forms, with the majority of Ti4+ coordinated to four oxygen, in tetrahedral TiO4 units, which coexist with more highly coordinated units. Barium titanate can be synthesized by the relatively simple sol–hydrothermal method. Barium titanate can also be manufactured by heating barium carbonate and titanium dioxide. The reaction proceeds via liquid phase sintering. Single crystals can be grown at around 1100 °C from molten potassium fluoride. Other materials are often added as dopants, e.g., Sr to form solid solutions with strontium titanate. It reacts with nitrogen trichloride and produces a greenish or gray mixture; the ferroelectric properties of the mixture are still present in this form. Much effort has been spent studying the relationship between particle morphology and its properties.