Effect of preparation conditions on the grains formation and domain structure of the sodium niobate ceramics

Abstract

The dependence of the microstructure and domain structure of sodium niobate ceramics on the production conditions (synthesis temperature of the initial composition and sintering temperature of the samples) was studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and piezoelectric force microscopy (PFM). It is found that the samples whose material was obtained without re-synthesis have a larger grain size. The deleting of re-synthesis makes it possible to obtain sodium niobate ceramics with ferroelectric properties at the 1100 °C sintering temperature, while for samples which are obtained by double synthesis, they appear only at sintering temperatures above 1200 °C.