Synthesis and characterization of novel reduced graphene oxide supported barium niobate (RGOBN) nanocomposite with enhanced ferroelectric properties and thermal stability

Novel reduced graphene oxide/barium niobate (RGOBN) nanocomposites were synthesized by hydrothermal method. The microstructure and morphology of graphene oxide, barium niobate and reduced graphene oxide/barium niobate was analysed by X-ray diffraction (XRD), FTIR, FTRaman, high resolution scanning electron microscopy and EDAX. XRD analysis showed that Barium Niobate samples are in perovskite phases, and the lattice parameters a, b and c almost decreased linearly with the increase of graphene nanosheets. The optical studies reveal the band gap of the nanocomposite to be 2.86 eV. Thermal studies show that RGOBN has high thermal stability than graphene. The remanant polarization and coercive electric field (0.0892 µC cm−2, −10.81 kV cm−1) of RGOBN nanocomposite superlattices calculated using P–E curve showed the strong hybrid interactions between graphene and barium niobate (BN) by decreasing leakage current density from 10−7 to 10−8 Acm−2. Graphene when incorporated into BN nanocubes increased the ferroelectric property almost two times than pure BN nanostructures. The squareness of polarization is also calculated for RGOBN and compared with that of BN.