Influence of micro- and nanoparticles of zirconium oxides on the dielectric properties of CaCu3Ti4O12

This work presents the results of Zr oxide doping of a CaCu3Ti4O12 (CCTO) ceramic prepared by a solid-state reaction. Different stoichiometries (ZrO and ZrO2) and grain sizes (micro- and nanoparticles) were added as dopants at concentrations of 0.5 and 1.0 wt%. Zr-doping controls the grain size growth, leading to a reduction of the grain size as observed by scanning electron microscopy. For both dopant concentrations, all of the samples exhibited lower dielectric loss and a smaller dielectric constant than those of undoped CCTO. The sample doped with 0.5% of the non-stoichiometric ZrO exhibits a dielectric constant over 3200 and a dissipation factor of 0.02 at 1 kHz. The impedance spectroscopy analysis confirms that the decrease of dielectric loss is mainly due to an increase in resistivity at grain boundaries, which is attributed to the suppression of oxygen-loss promoted by dopants.