Formation and Accumulation of Intragranular Pores in the Hydrothermally Synthesized Barium Titanate Nanoparticles

As highly integrated circuits are demanded for high-performance electric devices, small sizes of barium titanate (BaTiO3) as a dielectric material are desirable for the application of multilayer ceramic capacitors. Since the small sizes of the particles degrade the dielectric property, especially below a certain critical size, understanding the probable cause is significant for the high-performance capacitors. Here, we have demonstrated nanosized BaTiO3 with average size below 30 nm and a uniform size distribution. High-resolution transmission electron microscopy (TEM) shows that the as-synthesized BaTiO3 contains intragranular pores. We have analyzed the correlation between the intragranular pores inside nanoparticles and their phase ratio of cubic and tetragonal. We have found that the presence of the intragranular pores affects low tetragonality of BaTiO3 particles, and the intragranular pores are generated by the accumulation of hydroxyl groups during hydrothermal reaction. Formation and accumulation of intragranular pores have been investigated by ex-situ synchrotron X-ray diffraction and TEM analysis, suggesting the phase evolution model of nanosized BaTiO3.