Effect of increasing lanthanum substitution and the sintering procedures on the properties of SrBi4Ti4O15 ceramics

Lanthanum-substituted SrBi4Ti4O15 (SBTi) ceramic, that is SrBi4−x La x Ti4O15 (SBLTi), samples were calcined by solid-state reaction and densified using the microwave sintering and conventional sintering techniques. Their structural, morphological and mechanical properties were investigated. The microwave sintered samples showed high densities like 95% of the theoretical density with short duration exposures. Compared with SBTi ceramics and other lanthanide-substituted compositions, the incorporation of La 3+ results in clear improvement in properties for SBLT (x ∼0.75) with respect to the values of hardness and Young’s modulus of the microwave sintered samples (8.8–12.5 and 160–180 GPa) are higher than that for conventional sintered (8–10 and 135–155 GPa) samples.