Simple chemical preparation of perovskite-based materials using alkali treatment

Abstract

In this work, a simple alkali treatment process was introduced to synthesize ABO₃ perovskite related materials: CaTiO₃ (CTO), SrTiO₃ (STO), BaTiO₃ (BTO) and Ba_xSr_1−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.