Preparation and characterization of monodisperse Ag nanoparticles doped barium titanate ceramics

The phase, microstructure and dielectric properties of monodisperse Ag nanoparticles doped BaTiO3 ceramics with different contents of silver (0.0-20.0 mol%) were investigated in this paper. The XRD analysis showed that no phases other than BaTiO3 and silver were observed in the ceramics; it implied that silver did not react with BaTiO3 during sintering process. A small amount of monodisperse Ag nanoparticles (<0.5 mol%) was added to BaTiO3 ceramics could improve the sintered density; more content of monodisperse Ag nanoparticles (0.5-2.0 mol%) would decrease the relative density; larger content of monodisperse Ag nanoparticles (>2 mol%) could still improve the relative density. As the content of monodisperse Ag nanoparticles increased, the permittivity of ceramics increased continuously, while the dielectric loss decreased first and then increased. The ceramic doped with 1.0 mol% monodisperse Ag nanoparticles had the better dielectric properties. (C) 2008 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.