Enhancing structural properties of simple perovskite materials based on zirconate and titanate prepared by sol-gel method

Abstract

A simple and effective method is used in this study in order to obtain lead and lead-free simple perovskite structures. The perovskite materials BaTiO3, BaZrO3, PbTiO3 and PbZrO3 were synthesized via the sol-gel method. The main aim of this study is to investigate the effects of calcination temperature and rate on the material's properties. The structural phase formation of the prepared materials was characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy and Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy. The results gathered show that perovskite compounds based on barium occur at higher crystallization temperature, 900 and 1000 °C for BaTiO3 and BaZrO3 respectively, than the ones based on lead, 680 °C for PbTiO3 and PbZrO3. On the other hand, zirconate materials begin to crystallize at relatively high temperatures (1000 °C for BaZrO3 and 680 °C PbZrO3), than titanate-based materials (900 °C for BaTiO3 and 600 °C for PbTiO3). Also, the results showed, the obtaining of the non-centrosymmetric perovskite structure, indicating that piezoelectric property is present for all the elaborated materials.