A coprecipitation technique to prepare BaNb2O6

A mixture of ammonium oxalate and ammonium hydroxide was used to coprecipitate barium and niobium ions as barium oxalate and niobium hydroxide under basic conditions. This precursor on calcination at 750 °C yielded BaNb2O6 ceramics. This is a much lower temperature as compared to that prepared by traditional solid-state method (1000 °C), as reported for the formation of BaNb2O6. Transmission electron microscope (TEM) investigations revealed that the average particle size is 100 nm for the calcined powders. The room temperature dielectric constant at 1 kHz is found to be 1100. The ferroelectric hysteresis loop parameters of these samples were also studied.