AC Conductivity and Dielectric Relaxation Behavior of Sb2S3 Bulk Material

The Sb2S3 bulk material was used for next-generation anode for lithium-ion batteries. Alternative current (AC) conductivity, dielectric properties and electric modulus of Sb2S3 have been investigated. The measurements were carried out in the frequency range from 40 Hz to 5 MHz and temperature range from 293 K to 453 K. The direct current (DC) conductivity, sigma (DC), shows an activated behavior and the calculated activation energy is 0.50 eV. The AC conductivity, sigma (AC), was found to increase with the increase of temperature and frequency. The conduction mechanism of sigma (AC) was controlled by the correlated barrier hopping model. The behavior of the dielectric constant, epsilon', and dielectric loss index, epsilon'', reveal that the polarization process of Sb2S3 is dipolar in nature. The behavior of both epsilon' and epsilon'' reveals that bulk Sb2S3 has no ferroelectric or piezoelectric phase transition. The dielectric modulus, M, gives a simple method for evaluating the activation energy of the dielectric relaxation. The calculated activation energy from M is 0.045 eV.