A co-precipitation technique to prepare BiNbO4 powders

A simple co-precipitation technique was successfully used for the preparation of pure ultrafine single phase BiNbO4. A standard ammonium hydroxide solution was used to precipitate Bi3+ and Ta5+ cations as hydroxides simultaneously under basic conditions. For comparison, BN powders were also prepared by the traditional solid-state method. It is observed that the co-precipitation technique produces BiNbO4 on heating at 600 °C, whereas complete phase formation occurs only at 800 °C in the solid-state method. The phase contents and lattice parameters were studied by powder X-ray diffraction (XRD).