Flux growth and characterization of lead-free Sodium Bismuth Titanate-Barium Titanate single crystals

Polycrystalline material of Na0.5Bi0.5TiO3- BaTiO3 (abbreviated as NBBT) was synthesised by solid state reaction technique. NBBT single crystal with reasonable size has been successfully grown by spontaneous nucleation technique. The X-ray diffraction results confirmed that the crystal system of as grown NBBT was cubic at room temperature. The unit cell parameters of as-grown NBBT crystal are a=b=c=4.07 angstrom; V-68 angstrom(3). The composition of as-grown NBBT was analyzed by Energy Dispersive X-ray analysis (EDS). Differential Scanning Calorimetry (DSC) revealed the thermal behavior of the grown NBBT crystal. The temperature dependence of dielectric constant was measured and the Curie temperature was found to be 310 degrees C for NBBT crystal. The dielectric data fitted with Curie-Weiss law shows that the gamma value of the as-grown NBBT crystal is 1.46, which also confirms the relaxor behavior. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.