RETRACTED: Synthesis, structural, and ionic conductivity characterizations of new spinel material: LiCoNbO4 (Retracted article. See vol. 34, 2023)

Spinel materials have emerged out as excellent material for a broad spectrum of applications. For this reason, the new LiCoNbO4 was prepared by the conventional solid-state reaction method. The prepared material was structurally characterized by X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX) at room temperature. The structural analysis result clears the formation of trigonal structure (R3 ' C space group) with crystallite size similar to 48 nm. The optical properties of UV-Visible spectroscopy for our sample showed that the gap value is equal to 3.34 eV, making our compound a good candidate for optoelectronic applications. The electrical properties were examined in terms of impedance, relaxation mechanism, and activation energy, in the temperature and frequency range of 200-380 K and of 100-10(6) Hz, respectively. These studies confirm that the transport mechanism in the LiCoNbO4 ceramic is guided by the effect of grain boundaries. Simultaneously the conductivity spectrum was analyzed in terms of hopping mechanism. Due to the variation of the frequency exponent(s) with respect to temperature, the results are discussed using overlapping large polaron tunneling (OLPT) at low temperature and correlated barrier hopping (CBH) at high temperature. Finally, the parameters of real and imaginary part of dielectric function (epsilon ' and epsilon '') and dielectric loss tangent (tan(delta)) show a strong frequency dependence. Those dependences explain a dispersive behavior at low frequencies. The compounds have very high dielectric constant values that are useful in electronic devices. In brief the present work gives useful guidance for preparing the LiCoNbO4 spinel material for multifunctional device applications.