Synthesis, structural characterization and formation mechanism of giant-dielectric CaCu3Ti4O12 nanotubes

Abstract

A capillary-enforced template-based method has been applied to fabricate calcium copper titanate (CaCu3Ti4O12, CCTO) nanotubes (diameter ~200 nm) by filling sol-gel CCTO precursor solution into the nanochannels of porous anodic aluminum oxide (AAO) templates, subsequent heating for phase formation and fi- nally the removal of nano-channel templates by applying basic solution. X-ray diffraction (XRD), field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM) equipped with Energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) have been employed to characterize the morphology, structure, and composition of as-prepared nanotubes. XRD and selected-area electron diffraction (SAED) in-vestigations demonstrated that postannealed (750○C for 1 h) CCTO nanotubes were poly-crystalline with a cubic pseudo-perovskite cry- stal structure. The FE-SEM and TEM results showed that CCTO nanotubes were of uniform diameter (~200 nm) throughout their length. High resolution TEM (HRTEM) analysis confirm- ed that the obtained CCTO nanotubes are made of randomly aligned nano-particles 5-10 nm in size. EDX analysis demonstrated that stoichi- ometric CaCu3Ti4O12 was formed. The possible formation mechanism of CCTO nanotubes in the AAO template is discussed.