Fabrication and Electrical Properties of Textured Sr0.53Ba0.47Nb2O6 Ceramics by Templated Grain Growth

Textured Sr0.53Ba0.47Nb2O6 ceramics with a relative density of >95% were fabricated using templated grain growth (TGG). Acicular KSr2Nb5O15 template particles synthesized via a molten salt process were aligned by tape casting in a mixture of solid‐state‐synthesized SrNb2O6 and BaNb2O6 powders. The resulting ceramics possessed strong fiber texture along the polar axis ([001]) of the strontium barium niobate. Samples with 15.4 wt% templates attained a textured fraction of 0.82 after sintering at a temperature of 1450°C for 4 h. These materials showed peak dielectric constants of 7550 at 1 kHz, remanent polarizations of 13.2 μC/cm2, saturation polarizations of 21 μC/cm2 (60%–85% of the single‐crystal value), piezoelectric strain coefficients of 78 pC/N (70%–85% of the single‐crystal value), and room‐temperature pyroelectric coefficients of 2.9 × 10−2μC·(cm2·°C)−1 (52% of the single‐crystal value). These results show that TGG is a viable option for accessing single‐crystal properties in polycrystalline ceramics.