Crystal Structure of BaTiO3–KNbO3 Nanocomposite Ceramics: Relationship between Dielectric Property and Structure of Heteroepitaxial Interface

Abstract

High-energy synchrotron radiation powder diffraction experiments have been carried out to investigate the crystal structure of solvothermally synthesized KNbO3 (KN)/BaTiO3 (BT) nanocomposite ceramics in which a ceramic grain consists of a BT nanoparticle thinly coated with KN crystals through the heteroepitaxial interface. Rietveld analysis reveals that the ceramic grain has the core/multishell structure consisting of a BT core and distorted BT and KN multishells. BT is gradually distorted in the large region to form the interface with KN from the tetragonal structure at the core toward the cubic structure at the boundary between BT and KN. The variations of the volume of the distorted interface region of BT and the dielectric property of the ceramics show similar trends to the variation of KN/BT molar ratio, which suggests that the electrically soft interface of BT nanoparticles governs the dielectric properties of the ceramics.