A co-precipitation technique to prepare BiTaO4 powders

A simple co-precipitation technique has been successfully used for the preparation of pure ultrafine single phase BiTaO₄. A standard ammonium hydroxide solution was used to precipitate Bi³⁺ and Ta⁵⁺ cations as hydroxides simultaneously under basic conditions. This precursor, on heating at 600 °C, produced product phase. This is the lowest temperature for the formation of BiTaO₄ phase so far reported in the literature. For comparison BiTaO₄ powders were also prepared by the traditional solid state method. The phase contents and lattice parameters were studied by the powder X-ray diffraction (XRD).