Simple chemical preparation of perovskite-based materials using alkali treatment

Abstract

In this work, a simple alkali treatment process was introduced to synthesize ABO(3) perovskite related materials: CaTiO3 (CTO), SrTiO3 (STO), BaTiO3 (BTO) and BaxSr1-xTiO3 (BST). The perovskite materials, synthesized by using stoichiometric amounts of corresponding alkaline solutions Ba(OH)(2), Sr(OH)(2), Ca(OH)(2) and powdered TiO2, are pure phase and well-crystallized. The obtained powders are round, round-edged cubes and cubes with sharp edges for BaTiO3, SrTiO3 and CaTiO3 respectively. What's more, the Ba content (x) in BST can be directly and precisely modified to be any value between one and zero. And, the morphology of SrTiO3 can be manipulated by altering the reaction time. As time is prolonged, the morphology of the product changes from round to round-edged cubes to sharp-edged cubes. In the future, materials with such specific microstructure and morphologies may be used in electro-optical and photocatalytic applications.