Tailoring the Electric Field Response of Porous BaTiO3 Ceramics Fabricated via a Sucrose-Assisted Process

Porous BaTiO₃ (BTO) ceramics with controlled porosity were successfully fabricated using a simple and cost-effective sucrose-assisted route. Porosity was introduced by incorporating 10–50 vol% sucrose as a pore-forming agent, followed by sintering at 1350 °C for 2 h. The use of sucrose as an effective pore-forming agent is corroborated by the systematic reduction in bulk density from ~5.92 to ~4.1 g.cm^-3. X-ray diffraction and Raman spectroscopy analysis revealed the retention of the tetragonal phase across all samples, indicating that the introduction of porosity does not alter either the average crystal or local structure. Microstructural analysis demonstrated well-developed grains with heterogeneously distributed and interconnected porosity upon sucrose addition, while maintaining good grain connectivity. Electrical characterisation showed a gradual decrease in maximum polarisation (P_max) from ~21 µC.cm^-2 for dense BTO to ~12 µC.cm^-2 for 50 vol% sucrose samples. Despite increased porosity, the electric field-induced strain response exhibited only a marginal reduction (~0.137% to 0.10%), indicating preserved electromechanical functionality with enhanced large-signal piezoelectric coefficient ~468 pm.V^-1 for the 20 vol% sucrose sample, whereas the 10 vol% counterpart shows the largest ɛ_RT ~1150 with tan δ = 0.005. These results demonstrate that sucrose-assisted fabrication enables effective porosity engineering in BTO without compromising its ferroelectric nature, offering a promising approach for the development of porous ferroelectric ceramics with tunable electromechanical properties.