Electrical properties and microstructures of (Zn and Nb) co-doped BaTiO3 ceramics prepared by microwave sintering

Microwave sintering was successfully applied to prepare (Zn, Nb) co-doped BT ceramics in short soaking time. Tetragonal BT was detected as the major phase for all the samples. With increasing ZnNb2O6 addition, Ba2Ti5O12 was detected as the second phase. ZnNb2O6 formed a solid solution with BaTiO3, which is effective to inhibit grain growth. The co-doping with Nb and Zn induced core shell inhomogeneous structures, resulting in broadened permittivity peaks shifting to lower temperature. The introduction of ZnNb2O6 (less than 4.5%) was not only useful to enhance the densification, but also helpful to decrease the dielectric loss. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd and Techna Group S.r.l. All rights reserved.