Texture engineering of electronic ceramics by the reactive-templated grain growth method

The design and fabrication of textured bulk polycrystals have been one of the key issues for ceramists in their effort to extract the best performances from functional materials through powder processing. Reactive-templated grain growth (RTGG) is a processing method in which reactive template particles are mixed with complementary reactants and aligned, and the product is formed in-situ during heat-treatment, preserving the orientation of the template. RTGG has been applied to simple perovskite-type materials, yielding highly textured polycrystals with enhanced piezoelectric properties. The proposed method has also been extended to layer-structured materials, including bismuth layer-structured ferroelectrics and both p- and n-type oxide thermoelectrics with complex compositions. The optimum combination of microstructural and compositional designs is expected to produce outstanding materials with superlative performances.