Mechanochemical Synthesis and Characteristics of Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3

This paper presents a novel mechanochemical synthesis technique for making nano-structured Pb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O-3 (PMN) ferroelectric material without annealing treatment in a much shorter time and at much lower temperature than those reported in the literature, by using the starting precursors MgO, PbO, and Nb2O5. Specimens of various milling time (3-6h) are characterized from XRD patterns to track and analyze the synthesizing procedure of this mechanochemical processing route. The time used to make the desired PMN powders varies with different milling power. When the constituent oxides were mechanically activated at 1.8KW milling power for 6h, the perovskite phase PMN powder was obtained; while it was formed when milling at 3KW for only 3h. Typical SEM images of the as-received PMN powders show that the powders are aggregated of nano-particles of about 100nm in size.