A coprecipitation technique to prepare SrNb2O6

A mixture of ammonium oxalate and ammonium hydroxide was used to co-precipitate strontium and niobium ions as strontium oxalate and niobium hydroxide under basic conditions. This precursor yielded SrNb2O6 ceramics on calcining at 650 °C. This is a much lower temperature compared to preparation of SrNb2O6 by the traditional solid state method (900 °C). Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) 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 550. The ferroelectric hysteresis loop parameters of these samples were also studied.