Fabrication and Electrical Properties of Textured Sr 0.53 Ba 0.47 Nb 2 O 6 Ceramics by Templated Grain Growth

Textured Sr 0.53 Ba 0.47 Nb 2 O 6 ceramics with a relative density of >95% were fabricated using templated grain growth (TGG). Acicular KSr 2 Nb 5 O 15 template particles synthesized via a molten salt process were aligned by tape casting in a mixture of solid‐state‐synthesized SrNb 2 O 6 and BaNb 2 O 6 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/cm 2 , saturation polarizations of 21 μC/cm 2 (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 −2 μC·(cm 2 ·°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.