Effect of doping in the physico-chemical properties of BaTiO3 ceramics

Barium titanate is a very attractive perovskite given its ferroelectric, piezoelectric and dielectric properties. These can be further improved by the substitution of barium and titanium by different elements. Introducing both rare earths and/or metals in this compound enhances its optical and electrical properties, thus making it a multifunctional material suitable for many different applications. In the present work, the compound Ba0.91Er0.1/3Ca0.04Ti0.92Sn0.08O3 is prepared by solid state reaction and its structural, morphological, thermal optical and electrical properties are investigated in detail by X ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, differential scanning calorimetric, absorption spectroscopy and impedance spectroscopy respectively. Scanning electron microscopy shows that the material is composed by a major polycrystalline phase with micrometric grain size. Two-phase transitions at 448 K and 572 K are deduced from thermal and electrical measurements. The optical measurements indicate that both erbium and tin are well introduced in the structure, which is confirmed by energy dispersive spectroscopy, and affects the vibrational modes. a. c. and d. c. electrical measurements show that, depending on the measurement temperature range, conduction mechanism is either a non-overlapping small polaron tunneling or a correlated barrier hopping model. . Moreover, dielectric measurements prove a high dielectric constant and identify a phase transition from the ferroelectric phase to paraelectric one which is in agreement with literature. Such substitution improves the compound properties and makes it suitable for different devices.