MATERIALS
Complex electrical impedance and dielectric spectroscopy studies of BaTiO3- BaSnO3 ceramics obtained via sol-gel method.
In view of the practical applications of the piezoelectric ceramics produced from barium titanate (BaTiO3) and barium stannate (BaSnO3), (the BT-BS system), the dielectric behavior of such materials was studied. The starting components (powder of both BaTiO3 and BaSnO3) were synthesizedand structurally characterized in аdvance. Bulk samples of BT-BS (formed as tablets with addition of PVA plasticizer) were prepared using the sol-gel method by varying the BT-BS composition percentage. The samples were characterized by complex electrical impedance spectroscopy and dielectric spectroscopy in the frequency range from 0.1 Hz to 1 MHz. As compared to BaTiO3, an increase with at least 50 % was measured for the value of the room-temperature dielectric constant (e′ – the real part of the dielectric permittivity) of the BT-BS samples containing 15 wt% BaSnO3. In contrast, the 50 wt% content of BaSnO3 led to a decrease of ′ value of BT-BS by a factor of 3.5, due to relatively low e′ value of BaSnO3. Analyses of the frequency spectra of complex electrical impedance and complex dielectric permittivity revealed the dielectric relaxational behavior of the BaTiO3+BaSnO3 system. The results obtained for ′ of BT-BS dielectrics as a function of the temperature were correlated with the data from structural studies. In particular, a specific enhancement of e′ was observed in temperature range around 120C for the BT-BS samples containing 15 wt% BaSnO3. Corresponding conclusions were done. The effects observed show that the synthesized BaTiO3-BaSnO3 ceramics are promising materials for piezoelectric and dielectric applications, e.g., in energy storage devices.