Spark-plasma-sintering of bulk SrBi2Ta2O9 materials

Spark plasma sintering (SPS) is a new rapid sintering method, which has been developed recently for the fabrication of ceramics and composites. The most important feature of SPS is the pressed powders are heated by the spark discharge between the particles. As a result the samples can be sintered uniformly and rapidly and dense ceramics with fine grains can be obtained in a very short holding time. It has been reported that SPS has been used to fabricate a variety of materials such as ZrO2, Nb/Nb5Si3 and Ni2MnGa. However, few reports have been found on its applicability to bulk SrBi2Ta2O9 materials. In the present study, SrBi2Ta2O9 powders were prepared using a conventional solid-state reaction method from commercial powders of Bi2O3, SrCO3 and Ta2O5, which were ball-milled for 24 h.