Impedance spectroscopy of vanadium modified BaBi2Nb2O9 ceramics

In recent years a wide range of Aurivillius layered materials have been introduced. These novel materials are produced in many various forms such as fibers, thin films as well as bulk by using a number of processing routes. As advanced materials they are they have many interesting properties which include a number of useful electrical properties related to separated grain and grain boundary conductivity, impedance, activation energies, etc. In this paper these properties are described and discussed in detail. The electrical properties of the vanadium doped BaBi2Nb2O9 ceramic was measured over a wide range of temperatures by impedance spectroscopy (IS). The separated grain activation energy, calculated from Arrhenius characteristics at temperatures between room temperature and 600 degrees C, was 1 eV for 0 at % of vanadium dopant and 1.2 eV for 10 at.%, whereas the activation energies in the grain boundary region were 0.97 and 1.15 eV, respectively. The obtained results suggest the significant role of vanadium dopant, causing ordering the crystalline structure.