Tartrates have a well-known property of ferro electricity and other broad applications. Barium tartrate crystals have been successfully grown by gel method at ambient temperature in normal test tube. Thermal stability and kinetic parameters of these crystals were studied by employing Thermogravimetric Analysis (TGA). The TGA graph shows that the crystals are stable up to 220 °C temperature. Decomposition takes place in four stages. Activation energy and frequency factor for decomposition have been calculated using non-mechanistic equations.

In recent years there have been numerous attempts to grow pure as well as mixed single crystals because development in solid state science depends upon the availability of perfect, defect free crystalline materials. The `uniformity' of crystals, in general, allows the transmission of acoustic and electromagnetic waves as well as charged particles without scattering. The crystals grown using gel method, in particular, have high perfection and uniformity and they grow at ambient temperature. In tartrates, the conduction mechanism essentially occurs not only through electron transport but also by proton displacement which is effective, due to which they exhibit ferroelectric characteristics and nonlinear optical characteristics based on their second harmonic generation (Gon, 1990). Because of such properties and many other broad applications, attempts have been made to grow tartrate crystals. (Patel and Arora, 1976 and 1977, Arora et al., 2004a, 2004b, 2004c, 2005a, 2005b; Arora et al., 2006; Henisch, 1988 and Horowitz and Metzger, 1963). Barium tartrate single crystals have been grown and characterized by XRD (Silgo et al., 1999).

Thermal methods find application in analyzing and characterizing a system (element, compound or mixture) for chemical reactions, decompositions, reaction kinetics and mechanics, pyrolysis, combustion, etc. In the thermogravimetry technique, the weight change is recorded as a function of temperature. Using thermograms, many workers (Kotru et al., 1986) found thermal parameters and probable reaction mechanism for tartrates. Here we have put forward the results of thermal dissociation of barium tartrate (BaC₄H₄O₆) crystals grown by gel method.

Physics Journal, Thermogravimetric Analysis, Barium Tartrate, Thermal Methods, Activation Energy, Barium Tartrate Crystals, Thermogravimetry Techniques, Pyrolysis Products, Thermogravimetric Traces, Kinetic Equations, Mechanistic Models, Kinetic Parameters.