Structural characterization of La3+ modified Bi4Ti3O12 ferroelectric ceramics by XRD and XAS techniques

Bi4xLaxTi3O12 (BLT) ceramics were prepared and studied in this work in terms of La3+ modified the long and short range order structure. According to the results obtained from X‐ray diffraction (XRD), the solubility limit (xL) of La3+ into the Bi4Ti3O12 (BIT) matrix was here found to locate slightly above x = 1.5 and all samples bellow this limit presents reflection peaks characteristic of the orthorhombic Bi4Ti3O12 sample. X‐ray absorption near edge spectra (XANES) shows that the local order around Ti, Bi and La atoms is not significantly affected by the increase of La amount as well as by the fact that La atoms could be located on different Bi sites.