Sintering and characterization of dielectric and thermal mechanical properties of (Bi1/2Na1/2)TiO3-BaTiO3 ceramics

(1-x)BNT-xBT ceramics were prepared by conventional ceramic processing. The determination of the optimized sintering conditions allowed to the production of high density ceramics free from secondary phase. Dielectric and thermal mechanical properties of unpoled samples were determined from cryogenic temperatures to 850 K. The results revealed that the temperature in which an anomaly is observed from the thermal strain curve coincides reasonably with the so-called depolarization temperature characterized by dielectric measurements. While the Burns temperature for traditional relaxors can be determined by dielectric and thermal mechanical measurements and agree with each other, for the (1-x)BNT-xBT ceramics these measurements did not revealed such accordance.