Phase and chemical characterization of perovskite nickel niobate ceramics fabricated via a precursor method

Abstract

Perovskite relaxor ferroelectric lead nickel niobate (PNN) ceramics were fabricated by using B-site precursor method, in which columbite-NiNb 2O6 was employed as key precursor. It has been found that optimization of sintering condition can successfully lead to highly dense PNN ceramics. Although XRD analysis revealed that the ceramics consist of pure perovskite phase, significant fluctuation in chemical composition, precipitation of unreacted precursor and the formation of unwanted phases were found via a combination between SEM EDX and XPS techniques.