A co-precipitation method for preparation of Bi3TiNbO9 powders

A simple co-precipitation technique has been successfully used for the preparation of pure, ultrafine, single phase Bi3TiNbO9 (BTN). An aqueous ammonium hydroxide solution was used to simultaneously precipitate Bi3+, Ti4+ and Nb5+ cations as hydroxides under basic conditions (pH ∼9). No pyrochlore phase was found while heating powder at 500 °C and pure BTN phase was found to be formed by X-ray diffraction (XRD). For comparison, BTN samples were also synthesized by the traditional solid state method. The sequence of phase formation in both cases were investigated by XRD studies.