Density 4.64 g/cm³ | ||
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Appearance White rhombohedral crystals | ||
Potassium niobate meaning
Potassium niobate (KNbO3) is a perovskite ferroelectric crystal. It has nonlinear optical coefficient properties, making it common in the manufacture of lasers. Nanowires of potassium niobate have been used to produce tunable coherent light. The LD50 for potassium niobate is 3000 mg/kg (oral, rat).
Contents
Lead free sodium potassium niobate solution by sol gel method
Crystal Structure
On cooling from high temperature, KNbO3 undergoes a series of structural phase transitions. At 435 °C, the crystal symmetry changes from cubic centrosymmetric (Pm3 ̅m) to tetragonal non-centrosymmetric (P4mm). On further cooling, at 225 °C the crystal symmetry changes from tetragonal (P4mm) to orthorhombic (Amm2) and at −50 °C from orthorhombic (Amm2) to rhombohedral (R3m).
Use in research
Potassium niobate has been found useful in many different areas of materials science research, including properties of lasers, quantum teleportation, and it has been used to study the optical properties of particulate composite materials.
In addition to research in electronic memory storage, potassium niobate is used in resonant doubling, a technique developed at the IBM Almaden Research Center. This technique allows small infrared lasers to convert output into blue light, a critical technology for the production of blue lasers and technology dependent upon them.