Sintering process effect on the BaTiO 3 ceramic properties with the hydrothermally prepared powders

Ferroelectric barium titanate is an important traditional ferroelectric and dielectric material. Multilayer ceramic capacitors require nano-sized ceramics in technology. We synthesized nanocrystalline BaTiO3 powders by a hydrothermal method, pressed them into pellets and then, sintered nano sized BaTiO3 ceramics by conventional sintering method (CSM) and two-step sintering (TSS) process for comparison. The internal pore increases with the sintering temperature in the samples sintered with CSM while the samples sintered with TSS route show uniform grains without clear pores. BaTiO3 ceramics sintered with TSS process exhibit tetragonal structure and strong ferroelectric behaviors while those sintered with CSM mainly reveal cubic perovskite properties.