Significant increase of Curie temperature in nano-scale BaTiO3

Abstract

The low Curie temperature (Tc = 130 °C) of bulk BaTiO3 greatly limits its applications. In this work, the phase structures of BaTiO3 nanoparticles with sizes ranging from 2.5 nm to 10 nm were studied at various temperatures by using aberration-corrected transmission electron microscopy (TEM) equipped with an in-situ heating holder. The results implied that each BaTiO3 nanoparticle was composed of different phases, and the ferroelectric ones were observed in the shells due to the complicated surface structure. The ferroelectric phases in BaTiO3 nanoparticles remained at 600 °C, suggesting a significant increase of Tc. Based on the in-situ TEM results and the data reported by others, temperature-size phase diagrams for BaTiO3 particles and ceramics were proposed, showing that the phase transition became diffused and the Tc obviously increased with decreasing size. The present work sheds light on the design and fabrication of advanced devices for high temperature applications.