Potassium niobate


Potassium niobate is an inorganic compound with the formula KNbO3. A colorless solid, it is classified as a perovskite ferroelectric material. It exhibits nonlinear optical properties, and is a component of some lasers. Nanowires of potassium niobate have been used to produce tunable coherent light. The for potassium niobate is 3000 mg/kg.

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 to tetragonal non-centrosymmetric. On further cooling, at 225 °C the crystal symmetry changes from tetragonal to orthorhombic and at −50 °C from orthorhombic to rhombohedral.

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.